Somewhere I Have Never Travelled
by Alethnya
Summary: Lt. Rebecca Duval is a seasoned Section 31 operative. The job is her life and she lives it with single-minded dedication-orders are followed to the letter and without question. When she's assigned to act as handler to Commander John Harrison, everything changes. He's ruthless, he's calculating...and now, he's her responsibility. Starts 1 year Pre-Into Darkness. Khan/OFC.
1. Chapter 1

**somewhere i have never travelled**

**Alethnya**

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_ -ee cummings_

* * *

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

**A/N: So I finally had a chance to see **_**Star Trek Into Darkness**_** and like the glutton for punishment I am, I just had to go and fall in love with it. Y'know, because apparently I don't have enough stories taking up residence in my head, so I had to go and toss one more on the pile. So, please, read…enjoy. Reviews are love.**

**Updated, 9/27/13 – Chapter One has been thoroughly edited. Apologies, but the story itself demanded a few modifications as it decided to take on a life of its own, as explained in the A/N for Chapter Two.**

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**Chapter One**

_London. 2257.351_

It was raining again. A thick, steady, soaking rain that fell in ever deepening puddles from a steel-gray sky so thick with clouds that it was doubtful there be would be even a glimpse of sun that day.

Which, really, was fine by her—she wasn't feeling particularly sunny herself.

Limping along the sodden sidewalk, only half-heartedly sticking to the covered bits, Lieutenant Rebecca Duval longed to be tucked up in bed with a book and a cup of hot chicory and enjoying the first real leave time she'd had in almost two years—exactly where she had been not two hours ago. But leave or not, injured or not…when she was called in, she went; a fact that was doubly true when it was Admiral Marcus himself requesting her presence in his office at 1100 sharp. The Admiral was the single most powerful man in all of Starfleet—both the known and the unknown parts of it—and anyone with a brain in their head or an ambition in their body knew that when he said jump, you jumped. No questions, no comments, no exceptions or excuses.

So she had gotten up, gotten dressed and had firmly ignored the thin sliver of annoyance that wove its way through the innate dedication. She had left earlier than would normally be necessary, knowing that her hampered gait was going to mean a longer trip, but she was still going to be there well before the requested time. A fact which was, no doubt, fully anticipated if not outright expected. To the Admiral, punctuality was not just a courtesy; it was a demonstration of respect.

And she had never been anything but early to any meeting she'd ever had with him.

Hobbling through the glass doors at the front of the Kelvin Memorial Archive, she veered left, away from the information desk manned by two fresh-faced Academy graduates and toward the unobtrusive door situated around the corner and down a short, narrow hallway. Running her palm swiftly down the right hand side of the plain, metal door, she immediately heard the click of the old-fashioned latch disengaging as her bio signature was accepted. Reaching out with her good arm—the right, luckily enough; if only one of the pair was going to come through unscathed, at least it had been the useful one—she turned the knob, at which point the seemingly antiquated door slid open with a muted hiss, revealing the crisp, white interior of a not at all antiquated turbolift.

Once inside, the door whispered closed behind her and the lift immediately engaged, dropping down, down past even the lowest sub-basement of the Archive proper. When it had reached its destination, the doors opened once more and she started forward down a low-ceilinged, narrow hall lit only sparsely by the most rudimentary overhead lamps. At the far end, a good minute walk from the lift door, sat a single desk and behind it, a single man, whose eyes were locked on her, unblinking and unapologetically wary. His right hand held a phaser pointed directly at her; his left was poised just above a panic button. He wore a plain, black uniform that looked all Starfleet, but bore no distinction as to rank or designation—a plain black uniform that was echoed beneath the equally non-descript black greatcoat that she herself wore.

Approximately five feet from the desk, she stopped. "Duval to see Admiral Marcus."

"Prepare for biometric confirmation," the Agent, always Girard of late, directed.

She did as instructed, holding still and staring straight ahead while the scanners kicked to life, stripes of green light dancing across her skin as every square inch of her face was mapped and compared to her official clearance scan. After a moment, the light disappeared and Girard looked up from the screen mounted within the surface of the desk.

"Clear."

She started forward immediately, limping toward the door that had slid open just to the right of the desk. She dipped her head to her fellow Agent in perfunctory acknowledgment as she passed. "Girard."

"Duval," he returned, then frowned. "I'd heard you were back. Man, they weren't kidding were they?"

She stopped, half-turned back toward him, brow raised. "About?"

"You really got your ass handed to you," he elaborated, expression caught half-way between amused satisfaction and false sympathy—she expected the first, and frankly was surprised that he even bothered with the second; there was little love lost between them. "I mean, you look like _shit_, Duval."

Auguste Girard had proven a mediocre asset to the Section at the best of times and a flaming failure at the worst. He'd blown more covert field ops than anyone she'd known since donning the black uniform…thus, the desk job. He wasn't worth her very valuable time, but as she had a few moments to spare—and as she'd never done particularly well with being laughed at—she thought she might as well take a moment to give him back a bit of his own.

She graced him with a sweeter-than-sugar smile—a hand-me-down from her very Southern Grandmother, who'd done passive-aggressive better than anyone she'd ever known. "Why bless your heart for trying, Girard," she said, tone as saccharine as her expression and twice as false, "but that was just sad. I might not be looking my best right now, but I got the job done in the end. So next time you go looking to kick someone when they're down, might be best if you make sure you find someone who actually _is _down. It can be tricky, but here's a hint," she leaned down toward him, expression going cold, "just look for the pretty boy parked behind a desk while everyone else is out doing work."

Girard's very pretty face went very violently red. "You're a real bitch, Duval."

She quirked a brow at him and shot him a razor blade grin. "Yes, I am. And it's part of the reason why I'm damn good at my job. And you, Girard, are all mouth and no brain which is _all_ of the reason why you're sitting here on your ass, pushing buttons all day. So by all means, _Agent_, carry on."

She turned away and limped through the open door, savoring the image of his furious mortification as she left him sitting at his safe, comfy desk.

Five minutes later, she was standing in the anteroom of Marcus' office, staring into the antique mirror that hung on one wall, one of many antiques that decorated the Admiral's office space. His official Starfleet office at Headquarters in San Francisco was typical of the times, stark and utilitarian and very modern—all gleaming steel and polished glass. But here, in his unofficial abode, an entirely different story was told. These rooms were all warm wood and curving lines, sumptuous fabrics and richly upholstered furnishings. The ambiance spoke of times gone long by and a way of thinking that had gone along with it, but that the Admiral, for all his very modern ways, had been trying for quite some time to bring back from the historical dustbin.

Section 31, as much her home as any place had ever been, was the best example of that ambition. Within these walls were the men and women whose job it was to make sure that the world really was the peaceful, pacifistic paradise that it was supposed to be. And they were willing to use any means necessary to keep it that way.

Sometimes—thankfully not too often—that philosophy proved a painful one to live by.

She ran her eyes over her reflection, tracing the purple-black bruise that spanned her left cheek, the half-healed split in her lip and the butterflied gash above her right eye. Her face most certainly bore testament to the fact that she'd recently been in a hell of a fight, but she'd been around the block enough times to know all the best ways to camouflage the full extent of her injuries. Her dark brown hair, usually pulled tightly up into a neat chignon, hung around her face in soft waves. She'd avoided make-up all together, as it would only have drawn attention to places she didn't currently want attention. In fact, the only bits of color in her face were the wounds themselves and the pale, mossy green of her eyes. Her full length black pants—she never wore the Starfleet issue skirt anyway—hid the brace that supported her newly repaired MCL and PCL, though the unavoidable limping gait necessitated by the brace made it obvious she was wearing one. Her long-sleeved, loose-fitting black tunic concealed not only her wrapped ribs, but also the skin-tight sleeve that covered her left arm from wrist to elbow and protected the laser-knit bones of her forearm.

All in all, as she'd said to Girard, she could concede that she wasn't looking her best. But in all honesty, she liked the wounds; considered each one a badge of honor, actually. They told the story of a job well done under less than ideal circumstances and she wore them the way Agents like Girard never would—proudly.

The door to the Admiral's office opened with a soft hiss and she immediately turned toward it, automatically snapping to attention.

"Enter," the Admiral barked, abrupt as ever. Some Agents bristled at it; she preferred his straight-to-the-point style rather than the conciliatory song and dance approach that so many in Starfleet Command took now.

She walked into the office as normally as she could, forcing her limp disappear the best she could, though she knew it was rather an exercise in futility. As soon as she was through the door, she realized that the Admiral was not alone in the office and her posture snapped just that much straighter, her expression going deliberately and carefully blank. Keeping her eyes forward—though she took peripheral note of the five extra bodies crowding up the space to her right, she approached the large desk to her left. "Admiral Marcus," she acknowledged with nod, standing at attention. "You asked to see me, sir?"

Admiral Alexander Marcus sat back in his oversized chair, another relic of a bygone era in a room full of them. He was deep into his sixties now, though he was far from an old man—the bright blue eyes that regarded her appraisingly from that weathered face were far too sharp, far too _seeing, _to belong to a truly old man. "You're early, Lieutenant."

That had been faintly accusing and she only just held back her frown. "I am, sir. I apologize if I've interrupted, Admiral."

"No, no, you haven't interrupted anything," he waved away her concern, eyes sliding past her to focus behind her. "Well, nothing _important_ anyway—nothing that can't wait." He looked back to her, smiling now—a wide grin that looked almost smug. "So let's go ahead and get this debrief taken care of, shall we?"

She was confused, but she didn't even hesitate, playing along as if this was exactly the conversation she'd expected to have when she walked through the door. "Only if you're sure, Admiral. I'd be happy to wait for you to finish."

"Not at all, Duval. Trust me, this works out much better for everyone. So…" he picked up his PADD, flicking through files that she had already gone over with him a week previously, until he arrived at whichever one he was looking for, "...confirmed topaline smuggling operation on Capella IV, made deep cover contact with ringleader. Ringleader subsequently neutralized," he arched a brow, tossing her a look that was equal parts amused and disapproving. "Taking full advantage of those discretionary parameter ops, I see."

She returned his look with a grin and a shrug, falling easily into the role he was clearly expecting her to play. "They did come in handy in this case, sir."

The Admiral looked back down at the screen with a shake of his head. "Let's see…obtained information indicating Capella operation was one of many such operating along the borders of Federation space. Also had temporary visual access to detailed log indicating…," he set the PADD down with exactly the same sharpness that he had the last time they had this discussion, expression serious as he braced his arms on the desk and leaned toward her, "…_Klingon _involvement. Lieutenant, are you absolutely certain of that?"

"Absolutely, sir. Admittedly, I only know a few words of the language, but I'm familiar enough with the appearance of it to be able to confidently identify it. In fact, the bulk of the most recent transactions listed in that log point directly back to Qo'noS."

Admiral Marcus let out a deep sigh, his shoulders slumping. "Shit," he bit out. "Not only does that mean we're losing valuable mineral resources to those bastards, but it suggests they're infiltrating Federation space with ever increasing regularity. I don't think I need to tell you how little I like this development, Lieutenant."

He was right. He didn't. Mostly because he already had.

"It's certainly not an ideal situation, sir."

"Hell of an understatement there, Duval." Another deep sigh, then his expression changed, warmed almost exponentially. "But that was some extremely valuable intel you appropriated for us. Another job well done, Lieutenant. I am duly impressed."

Now _that _was different; a deviation from the script of their previous meeting. An important one, she assumed, to whatever his purpose was for this performance. The Admiral made it a point never to dole out praise—who saw success as nothing more than the inevitable outcome of proper training—so that he was doing it now clearly meant something. "Thank you, sir."

The Admiral leaned further back, looking up at her with concern. "However, Doctor Pedregon wasn't quite as impressed. He informs me in his report that you're grounded for the foreseeable future while you heal up." He stopped and gave her a visual once over. "We're sure going to miss you around here until you get back. Tell me, how _are_ you feeling, Lieutenant?"

"I've felt better," she admitted, recognizing that they were finally coming to the point of this entire charade the Admiral had enacted, "but I've also felt worse. And there's really no need for me to be missed, sir; I patched up well enough that the Doctor saw no need to place me on mandatory medical leave. I may not be cleared for the field, but I can still be useful."

"Is that so?" The Admiral's eyes were almost glowing with approval now, though still intense in their regard. Once more, his focus shifted to behind her. After a moment, his lips curved into a slow, calculating grin. "Well doesn't that just work out _perfectly_?"

There was suddenly a thickness to the air, a palpable tension that she was very careful not to react to. "Sir?"

"I've just thought of a way that you can, in fact, be useful while you're stuck in dry dock, Duval." He snapped his eyes back to hers, all business and no warmth to be found now. "Are you up for it?"

"Always, sir." No act there; just straight, simple truth.

Marcus was silent for a moment, studying her…measuring her. Apparently satisfied, he nodded once more, meaningfully. "You've continually proven yourself to be one of the best we've got. Usually I'd be loath to pull you from active duty for anything, but since you're out of commission anyway, I can't think of anyone more qualified for this particular job." He stood, moved around the desk and motioned for her to stand as well. "We've…acquired a new Agent," he said, and the way he said it spoke volumes.

"Have we?"

"We have," Marcus repeated. "And I'm afraid he's going to need quite a bit of…acclimation."

She was intrigued, and it seemed the appropriate response, so she allowed it to show on her face. "How so, sir?"

The Admiral waved off her question. "A subject for later, Duval. For now, I think introductions are in order."

Taking that as her cue to turn around, she did just that, immediately eyeing and cataloging every detail of the scene that lay before her.

As she'd noted upon entering, there were five people occupying the sitting area of the Admiral's office. Four of them she recognized as being part of the private security detail that Marcus employed for the Section. Those four were positioned on either side of one of the wingback chairs that sat in front of the mahogany bookshelves that lined the wall, two in front and two behind, and all of them with their hands on their phasers and their eyes on the man seated in the chair between them.

He was an unknown; she knew that instantly. She rarely forgot a face, but even if she were inclined to, she knew for certain that she would never have forgotten this one.

He was a handsome man; astoundingly so, with his black hair, pale blue eyes, chiseled cheekbones and almost criminally sensuous mouth. His face was a trifle long, his nose just a smidge too large for his face, but really, those small imperfections only made him _more _attractive. He sat in the chair like a King on a throne, head up, spine straight, arms along the armrests and feet flat on the floor in front of him. He wore the same unrelenting black that they all did down here—the same pants and tunic and boots—but he did it with such careless ease that he made it look almost sinfully good.

And as soon as her eyes met his, she realized how right she'd been. Sinful was _exactly _the right word for him.

When the full force of that cut-glass gaze met hers, it took every shred of training she possessed not to take a step backwards. Assessing, calculating and utterly, utterly cold—the creature looking out from behind that perfect exterior was a force to be reckoned with. This man, whoever he was, was a predator, and the way he was looking at her right that moment left her feeling like nothing so much as sighted prey.

It was not a feeling she relished, especially not when she was injured enough to appear easy pickings. And so, despite her various injuries, she met that wolfish look head on, chin coming up and shoulders squaring as she stood her ground.

From the way his eyes narrowed just the tiniest bit, she suspected that he was unimpressed by the display. So she lifted her chin a little higher and refused—utterly and completely _refused_—to back down. She'd just completed the mission of a lifetime—successfully, if not as flawlessly as she would have liked. She'd be damned if she was going to be cowed by this man or anyone.

She wore her audacity boldly, proudly; refusing to budge even a little bit from her head on perusal of him. His expression never changed, though she thought she detected the faintest hint of a brow quirk. Whether that meant she'd annoyed him further or had managed to impress him even a little bit, she had no idea.

Marcus walked half way down the room before turning back toward her. "Lieutenant Duval, this is Commander John Harrison," he swung his gaze toward the man in the chair. "Harrison, meet your new keeper…Lieutenant Rebecca Duval."

Those blue eyes, which had shifted to Marcus when he began to speak, were back on her again and she could feel the weight of his gaze like a living thing as it scrutinized her once more. "If this is a jest, Admiral, I fail to see the humor in it."

His voice was staggering—potent like she hadn't known a voice could be; it fell from his lips and into the room like slow-pouring honey, rich and dark. But just as with the rest of him, that outward perfection masked something far more dangerous; a sharply honed blade hidden just beneath a flawless surface. She had little trouble envisioning the damage that voice could do; could easily imagine those low, sonorous tones turning vicious and gutting as efficiently as any knife.

This man—this Commander John Harrison—was quite possibly the most dangerous creature she'd ever encountered. And while she still didn't know the full extent of her purpose here, she knew that it would be worth it, whatever it was. If nothing else, he was sure to be a challenge. And there were few things she relished more than a good challenge.

Marcus crossed his arms over his chest, facing Harrison now, and sighed deeply. "Problem, Harrison?"

Harrison looked over to Marcus, expression turning glacial. "Do not, for an instant, mistake my grudging compliance for obedience. If you truly want my help, you will not insult me by foisting this...wreck upon me."

Duval had to bite the inside of her lip to keep the retort she so desperately wished to give from flying free. Marcus merely frowned, annoyed but not looking particularly surprised.

"This wreck, as you call her, is one of our very best, and…"

"…and if that truly is the case," Harrison cut in, words dripping with contempt, " then I fear that your Section 31 is so far beyond the possibility of help that even I will be unable to affect any real change. I expected to be met with inferiority, Admiral, no matter which of your so-called Agents was assigned to me—I did not expect the incompetence to be writ quite so large or quite so colorfully across their very face."

Her temper flared and her spine went stiff with indignation. "With all due respect, Commander," she said, her temper lending a sharp edge to her smooth Cajun drawl. "I'm neither inferior nor incompetent. I might look the worse for wear, but my mission was successful." She lifted her chin, pride carrying her where nerve might not have wandered. "My missions are always successful."

Harrison's lips twisted in a sneer, not even attempting to hide his disdain. "If what I see before me is your idea of success, Lieutenant Duval, then I somehow doubt you understand the meaning of the word."


	2. Chapter 2

**somewhere i have never travelled**

**Alethnya**

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_ -ee cummings_

* * *

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

**A/N: Ok, so, I've done something that I never ever do. If you have previously read chapter 1, please go back and read it again as it has been updated quite thoroughly. When I started this, it really was on a bit of a whim. However, over the course of the past week, this story has taken on a life of its own. It has evolved and I had to either evolve with it or give it up as a lost cause…thank goodness I did decide to just go with it, because now…now it is a story that desperately wants to be written—and which I just as desperately want to write.**

**Thank you to those who followed/reviewed. I sincerely appreciate it! **

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**Chapter Two**

Rebecca Duval had grown up very differently than most of her Starfleet contemporaries. Most of them hailed from vast, sprawling cities where the only green spaces were intricately planned and impeccably groomed and as far removed from any actual nature as it was possible to get. She, on the other hand, had grown up in middle-of-nowhere Louisiana, surrounded by swamps and bayous and about as much nature as it was possible to find in the glass and metal wonderland that the world had become. She'd spent the bulk of her childhood with muddy feet, skinned knees and filthy hands; hair never failing to wind up a mangled mess no matter how neatly plaited it began the day.

She remembered one time, in particular, when she'd been no more than eight or nine years old—she'd been out by the fence that marked the boundary of her families land (such as it was; four acres wasn't exactly an estate, but it was enough to keep her busy from sunup to sundown during school breaks). She had come upon a young coyote tangled in the archaic barbed wire that her grandfather had insisted on using until the day he died.

And oh, it really hadn't been happy about it. She remembered it vividly—how it had howled and snapped and snarled at her, how those pitiless black eyes had glared at her, promising retribution; _daring _her to come closer. She'd felt sorry for it and though she'd known it was about the stupidest thing she could've done, she'd tried to help it anyway.

It had been a very long, very bloody walk home after that, followed by a trip to the hospital where the various bites and scratches she'd received in return for her ill-considered act of kindness had to be thoroughly cleaned and treated. To top it all off, she'd had to get four different inoculations on the off chance that the thing had been carrying any diseases. Upon returning home that evening, she'd seen her grandfather walking back toward the house from the woods with his old shotgun propped on his shoulder and she hadn't needed to ask to know exactly where he'd been and what he'd done.

She'd cried herself to sleep that night, feeling so horribly _responsible_ that it made her sick to her stomach.

And now, as she stood there, facing down the every bit as pitiless glare of Commander John Harrison, listening to him snarl and snap at her, she found herself suddenly and all too vividly reminded of that trapped, vicious and thoroughly pissed off coyote once more.

Commander Harrison wasn't exactly skinny, four-legged and stuck in a fence, but he was just as cornered and just as dangerous…but she'd be damned if he got any help from her. She was older now, wiser; less altruistic—in the same situation now, she'd just shoot the damn thing straight out and save herself the trouble.

"_If what I see before me is your idea of success, Lieutenant Duval, then I somehow doubt you understand the meaning of the word." _

Yeah…Harrison was goddamned lucky that she wasn't armed.

She still wasn't exactly certain what the Admiral's play here was, but as he wasn't stepping in, she assumed she had leave to respond. He knew better than to think she wouldn't return the Commander's vitriol in kind—especially when it was actually her that was being attacked. Which, honestly, was sort of…invigorating.

In her line of work, it was always about being somebody else; somebody different. But at that moment, she wasn't anything except herself—plain ol' Rebecca Duval. It was a rare thing in her world.

She decided she might as well enjoy it while it lasted.

"You know, you might just be right, Commander." She easily slipped out from beneath the yoke of her Starfleet self; rolling up her metaphorical sleeves and letting the rough-and-ready redneck girl that still lived underneath the professional polish come out and play. "Maybe it's high time I got myself a new dictionary. Although you might wanna look into one for yourself—because if all of this," she gestured toward the guards surrounding him, "is _your _idea of success, then I reckon you don't have a whole lotta room to talk."

One raven black brow arched high on his forehead, condescension just _oozing _from him. "And you believe you have even the slightest grasp of what _all of this_ is, Lieutenant?"

"Not especially," she acknowledged with a shrug, "but I believe I know what a prisoner looks like when I see one, Commander. That gives me all the grasp of this particular situation that I need at present."

"Then you are not only woefully inept but appallingly naïve as well. I wonder, Lieutenant, is this stunning combination the result of institutionalized incompetence or merely your own natural tendency toward ineptitude?" He smiled at her then, a razor blade grin. "I know I have my suspicions on which is more likely."

Duval cocked her head to the side, expression bland. "Y'know, you can use all the fancy words in the world to pretty it up, Commader, but really your entire argument boils down to 'because you're a stupidhead and I don't like you'. Next thing I know you'll be yanking on my hair and throwing spitballs at the back of my head."

Just that quickly, any hint of smugness vanished, and he looked—to borrow a phrase from her long-deceased bastard of a grandfather—like to spit nails. "Dismiss me at your peril, Lieutenant. I am not a child, to be put in my place. Nor am I a man to be trifled with. I am _more_ than you could ever comprehend; more than you could even begin to imagine. I am..."

"What you are, Commander," Duval interrupted, not even attempting to hide her amusement, "is one foot stomp away from a full on temper tantrum."

He growled at that—a real, honest animal sound that sent a shiver down her spine and set the hair at the back of her neck on end. His eyes blazed electric blue and he launched himself to his feet, fists clenched at his side and expression an open flame of fury—and she knew that _this _was the real Commander John Harrison, the man who had been hiding under all that glacial cold.

She'd been convinced that he was dangerous, but he was right—he was _more_. He wasn't just dangerous…he was _deadly_.

And he was looking at her as if he wanted nothing more than to squash her under his boot like the drooling insect he so vocally believed her to be. It was testament to the visceral potency of his anger that even the four phasers now trained unerringly on him did nothing to ease her discomfort—mostly because he didn't even glance at them; paid them absolutely no mind whatsoever.

Duval, running on sheer stubbornness, refused—_refused_—to show how very much she wanted to retreat, to put something other than five feet of open space between them. Luckily, she had plenty of experience with terrifying situations and so she dug deep, shoved the fear down deep inside, squared her shoulders and kept her eyes locked on his.

"Harrison!"

The Admiral's voice was sharp, turning the word into a clear warning. Not that it appeared to do much good; the Commander was still looking at her like he was going to snap her neck and very much enjoy doing it.

"All of them, Harrison," the Admiral barked out, annoyed.

This clearly meant something more to the Commander than it did to her. His gaze broke from hers and snapped to the Admiral and she watched the muscle along his jaw tick as he ground his teeth together.

The Admiral took a long, slow step toward him. "Every. Single. One."

For a long moment, they just glared at one another and the entire room seemed to hold its breath as they waited to see who would crack first.

A moment later, they found out. And in truly spectacular fashion.

Commander Harrison let out another growl, whipped around and let fly a brutal kick, booted foot connecting so hard with the chair he had been sitting in that it flew backwards and slammed into the shelves behind it and everything—chair, shelves, books—just…exploded, if such a thing were even possible. As bits of wood and paper and fabric fluttered down around him—and while everyone else in the room stared on, utterly frozen—Commander Harrison threw back his head and just _roared_.

It was a sound like nothing she had ever heard before; a sound that was rage and pain and so raw with both that it very nearly brought tears to her eyes.

It brought her right back to that coyote trapped in the fence again. The Admiral didn't have a shotgun, but it appeared he hadn't needed one; those words had been weapons and he'd used them accordingly.

And now, just like then, she felt so horribly…_responsible_.

She dropped her eyes to the floor, blinking hard against tears and fighting to regain her composure. This reaction, whatever it was, would do her absolutely no favors with the Admiral. He wouldn't understand and he would see it as the weakness that it very much was. And no Agent under his command could afford to show weakness; not if they wanted to keep their status within the Section.

Luckily, the Admiral was too preoccupied at the moment to notice much of anything in regards to her. Ranting and cursing up a storm at the mess, he ordered Harrison shackled and escorted to the smallest of the three interrogation rooms that sat just down the hall from his office. Duval glanced up despite herself, curious to see how the Commander would take that on top of everything else.

When he just stood there and allowed it, allowed the shackles to be locked onto his wrists and the four security goons to manhandle him not at all gently toward the door, she frowned, confused by the quiet acceptance that was so at odds with what had just happened. As they approached the door, the Commander looked up and their eyes met once again.

The rage was still there, still burning bright. But it was the pain woven in and around the rage caught at her; that drew her in and spoke directly to the sympathetic soul that she'd never quite managed to dismantle despite her best efforts. Compassion welled up in side of her—anything that could leave such a man so completely undone had to be truly terrible—as well as healthy doses of regret and confusion.

He returned her look steadily and their eyes remained locked together until he was yanked out of the office and the door slammed shut behind him.


	3. Chapter 3

**somewhere i have never travelled**

**Alethnya**

* * *

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_ -ee cummings_

* * *

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

* * *

**A/N: Thank you to those who have reviewed and/or favorite! I greatly appreciate it. Thanks also to my beta, Xaraphis. You rock and I love you!**

* * *

Half an hour and a whole lot of clean up later, she was once again facing Admiral Marcus across his habitually messy desk, composure fully restored and all that inconvenient compassion locked up tight once more. It annoyed her that she'd cracked so easily and she decided the best course of action was to chalk it up to the painkillers and move on.

The saving grace in all this was the fact that, in all the commotion, the Admiral hadn't noticed a thing. That she was still sitting there was testament to that.

"So," the Admiral leaned back in his chair, once again leveling that assessing look of his at her face. "Commander John Harrison. Thoughts, Lieutenant?"

She wanted to laugh. Loudly. Instead, she quirked a brow and shook her head. "Frankly, sir, so many that I don't know where to start."

Marcus let out a soft snort of laughter at that. "I can well believe that, Duval. And since time is of the essence, I'll save you the effort of figuring it out."

He reached out and slid a hard copy folder across the desk to her. It may not have said 'burn after reading', but she had been in the game long enough to know that any information handed to her in print rather than on a PADD was information that was expected to go no further than her own eyes. She swiped it off the desk with her good arm and settled it in her lap. Opening it, she was immediately greeted with a very old piece of paper, crumbling at the edges. A torn out page from a book, she decided almost immediately, fingering the ragged inside edge. There was a photograph at the top of the page and writing beneath—Hindi, she suspected, though couldn't be absolutely certain.

And then she took a good look at the picture.

A man stood centered in the foreground of a very large room with massive windows and arching ceilings—a palace of some kind, if the gilded throne that stood just behind the subject was any indication. As for the man himself, he was tall, imposing in a high-collared crimson and gold coat that fell to just past his knees and a pair of crimson pants that fit tightly around his ankles. His feet were bare and his arms were crossed and his hair was a rakish mop of coal black curls that fell over his forehead and around his ears.

None of it was familiar, except for the eyes that stared out from beneath the untamed curls.

She would know those eyes anywhere.

The man staring up at her from that photograph—challenging any and all who looked at him—was Commander John Harrison.

But the caption beneath the picture bore another name entirely; a name that leapt up from the depths of her memory as a droning snippet from one of the history courses she'd been required to take at the Academy.

_Samraat Khan Noonien Singh._

Her head snapped up, eyes meeting the Admirals. "Explain, please, sir."

"You're looking at a page from a late twentieth century primary school textbook. At that time, the man you see there, Khan Noonien Singh, ruled approximately a quarter of the planet, centralized in Eastern and Central Asia…"

"I know the history," she cut in, skirting the thin line between succinct and insolent, "what I want to know, sir, is how a three hundred year old dictator is currently sitting in an interrogation room just down the hall."

If the Admiral was bothered by her abruptness, he didn't show it. Rather, he smiled, almost…fondly. "He is spry for a man his age, isn't he?"

"He damn near back kicked a chair through a concrete wall, sir. I don't really think spry is the word for it."

The Admiral's lips thinned as he glanced behind her. "So he did. You say you know the history, so I assume you know how he managed that little feat of strength?"

Duval dug deep into her internal files, sorting and finding the appropriate memories. "Genetically engineered super-human," she recited. "Enhanced strength, speed and intelligence."

"Very good, Duval. He is all those things and a great deal more."

Shifting impatiently in her seat, she nodded sharply. "Yes, yes. It's very impressive, sir. But I'm really more interested in how he's _here_ and not several hundred years dead."

This time, her impatience earned her a frown. But as it also paved the way—_finally_—for the information she really wanted so she didn't feel the least bit sorry for it. "Three weeks ago, one of our scouting ships en route to Starbase 12 encountered a derelict ship drifting along the outskirts of the Gamma 400 system. Upon boarding, it was discovered to be a late twentieth century sleeper ship…"

"The Botany Bay," Duval interrupted. "So the stories were true."

Marcus gave a slight shrug. "In a way, yes—though greatly exaggerated. We found one soul aboard—Khan himself, tucked away in a cryotube where he'd spent the past three centuries napping. Within a week, we had him awake and over the past two we've been doing our best to help him deal with this whole new world he's been thrust into. That sort of thing can put even the strongest man in a delicate mental state."

He was trying to sound genuinely concerned for the other man, but failing miserably. She briefly toyed with the idea of telling him how horrible a liar he actually was—even the Admiral's tells had tells, for God's sake—but dismissed the thought almost immediately. It didn't matter if she knew he couldn't give a rat's hairy little ass about Khan's mental state. What mattered were the facts sprinkled on top of the fake solicitude.

"To what purpose, sir?"

The Admiral went very still. His eyes had gone cold again, assessing her, cataloguing her. "Excuse me?"

Duval suppressed the urge to sigh. "Clearly you intend to utilize him in some capacity, sir. I was just wondering what you had in mind."

"Wep dev," the Admiral barked out after a moment's consideration. "Well, really R&D in general, but specifically on wep dev. He's a genius like we've never seen and he ruled a quarter of the world quite happily for a number of years. That big old brain of his is going to come in very handy against the demons in the darkness, Duval—very handy, indeed."

It made sense, after a fashion. A very vocal part of her was fairly screaming inside that it sounded like a _very bad idea_ to even attempt to leash a man with those kinds of credentials. But then a larger and more decisive part of her brain told the rest to shut up because it wasn't her job to question the plan.

Speaking of her job…

"And my part in this, sir?"

"I told you earlier—before your little pissing contest—you're his new keeper. At this point, I don't trust him as far as I can throw him, so I need to have eyes on what he's doing all the time. Watch him. Make sure he's doing what he's supposed to be doing. Keep him focused. Get _close _to him. Be his friend, his confidant, his…_whatever_. I want his loyalty secured, Duval. Khan is a bona fide military genius and I refuse to allow this opportunity to just up and run away. Your job is to do anythingand everythingin your power to make sure that doesn't happen. And I do mean _anything_ and _everything_."

Duval's stomach gave a sideways lurch at the blatant subtext in the Admiral's words, the picture he was painting with such careful strokes becoming ever clearer. "All due respect, sir…are you're suggesting," she paused, frowning deeply, "it almost sounds like you mean for me to…to…_seduce _him."

The Admiral didn't even blink. "Needs must, Lieutenant. I imagine that would go a long way toward achieving the results I'm expecting. And believe me when I say, I'm expecting a great deal."

A serpentine wisp of panic coiled around and up her spine. "Admiral Marcus…sir…I don't think…" she stopped, giving an almost helpless shrug and shake of her head. "That's not really my area of expertise, sir."

"Then figure something else out. Ultimately, I don't care how you do it, but I want you to get close to him. I want him to trust you. However you chose to make that happen is entirely up to you. The point is I want him leashed even tighter than he is now. I'm not stupid enough to think I've actually got him under control; not at this point."

That brought up a very interesting question and she chose to shelve everything else for the time being—arguing with the Admiral would get her nowhere fast. "What do we have on him anyway?"

"What?"

She leaned forward slightly, eyes narrowed, considering. "Clearly we have something on him—something big. Something that's making him, as he put it, grudgingly compliant. What is it?"

"Not your concern, Lieutenant."

She'd figured as much, but it had been worth asking. "Aye, sir."

"Anything else?"

This was, without question, the most nebulous assignment she'd ever been given; she was used to broad mission parameters, but this was bordering on the ridiculous. However, the folder in her lap was thick with further information; details, she assumed, on the man in question and full scope of the operation. She would peruse it later, at her leisure, before destroying it and hope that it was enough. It was evident that the Admiral himself was prepared to offer nothing more, so she was just going to have to make do. "No, sir. Not at present."

"Good," the Admiral clapped his hands together, clearly pleased to be done with the conversation. "On to the next step, then."

"Which is?"

"Relocation. No way in hell I'm keeping Harrison planet-side—too many potential risks here. Your transport to the Io Facility is scheduled to leave at 2300 tonight."

Duval sighed inwardly. She hadn't even properly unpacked from her last mission yet—which, she supposed, was handy, all things considered. "This is a long term arrangement, I assume, sir."

Marcus nodded. "Indefinite, as a matter of fact."

"I'll need to collect my things…"

The Admiral waved a negligent hand at that. "No need. I've got two agents clearing out your apartment as we speak. They'll bring all your personal effects back with them."

Duval stiffened. "I don't much care for other people pawing through my things, Admiral."

"Too bad, Lieutenant. I've got other plans for you."

"Such as?"

"As amusing as that little pissing contest between you and Harrison was, it certainly did you no favors with him. Given the scope of your assignment, you'll need to amend that and there's no time quite like the present, is there?"

That had been a just a little too gleeful—for whatever reason, the Admiral was well pleased with how that first meeting had gone, regardless of what he was saying now. "If I had known the particulars of the situation beforehand, sir, I assure you that I would have handled it differently. As it is, I'm confident that the desired outcome was achieved," she glanced over her shoulder meaningfully, "although there might've been a bit more drama than intended."

The look Marcus gave her at that was bland. "An impressive understatement, Duval."

"Thank you, sir," she dipped her head, short and sharp, "it's a gift. But now, I need a few minutes to myself, if you don't mind, sir. You've given me a lot to think about."

The Admiral grinned a toothy grin. "Nothing you can't handle, Lieutenant. I'm banking on that."

His faith should have been touching. Instead, it settled like a lead weight on her shoulders.

She'd thought her last mission would be the one to make her; cement her position and guarantee her a long and illustrious future with the Section. But now she knew, it had only been one more step up.

This assignment…this was really it. And she was almost positive that if it _didn't _make her, it would most certainly break her.

* * *

An hour and two very strong cups of horrible coffee after that, Duval stood with her back against the wall just opposite the door of Interrogation 3. She'd read through the file the Admiral had given her, as complete a dossier on Khan Noonien Singh as known history would allow. And then she'd set to thinking. She'd mulled over every detail, considered about twenty different angles, and ultimately, the only decisive conclusion she'd come to was that she really, _really _didn't like this plan.

Not one little bit.

Not only did she still think the _entire _undertaking, start to finish, was a ticking time bomb of potential awfulness—an opinion that had only solidified further with every word she'd read about Khan—but the part of it that was specific to her…

It was ridiculous. Utterly.

She'd always believed Admiral Marcus to be the brains behind the Section…but if this was any indication, she was going to have to amend that. Anyone who would cast her in the role of temptress wasn't just dumb, they were delusional.

Yes, she was good at what she did, and therein lay the problem—_that_ wasn't what she did.

She didn't orchestrate elaborate seduction scenarios. She didn't know all the things to say and do to turn a perfectly sensible man into a panting, aching puppet. It simply wasn't a skill set that she possessed, be it in in her private life or her professional one—the only time men fell at _her_ feet was after she'd shot them. If infiltrating Khan's bedroom was the primary goal of this operation, she rather wondered at his assigning her in the first place—especially as there was a small but elite group of female operatives who were specifically trained for exactly this sort of mission.

Female operatives who wore their femininity like a silken negligee; who could conquer a man with a look.

She tended to wear her femininity like a baggy sweater. And the last time she'd tried to smolder at a man, he'd asked her if she was feeling all right before removing himself to the opposite end of the bar.

Meanwhile, Khan Noonien Singh's _harem _had—according to the literature—been so large that he'd been ensured of a different companion for every night of the year.

Every. Night.

She didn't have a chance in hell of competing with that. Not now, not ever.

Thankfully, despite his blatant endorsement of her using old fashioned feminine wiles on her new charge, the Admiral _had _given her an out. He'd said he didn't care how it was done, so he couldn't be angry when she did it her own way.

But she still had no idea what her own way was going to entail. To get there, she needed more information. And the only way she was going to get more information was through further exposure to the subject. After how badly things had gone the first time they'd been in a room together, she knew that she was going to have to pull out the big guns the second time around.

Admiral Marcus was probably going to be more than a little angry when he found out what she was about to do—but it was a calculated risk and one that she knew she had to take if she had any hope of succeeding. She needed to surprise Khan; to unsettle him. He would be prepared for a story; a carefully crafted and utterly bullshit story that he would see right through. He was far too intelligent and far too experienced for anything else.

So it was simple really. She was going to walk in there, sit herself down and give him the very last thing he would ever have expected to get from her or anyone else associated with Section 31.

She was going to tell him the truth.


	4. Chapter 4

**somewhere i have never travelled**

**Alethnya**

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_ -ee Cummings_

* * *

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

**A/N: As always, thank you for the reviews/follows/favorites! Shout out to my beta—I heart you, Xaraphis!**

* * *

**Chapter 4**

When she stepped through the door of Interrogation 3, Duval was coolly composed, all of her misgivings filed away inside her mind to be dealt with later. She paused just inside the room, the hiss of the door closing behind her falling loud into the silence. The security detail was present; the four blank-faced men stood in a half circle around their charge, who was seated in a plain steel chair on the far side of the table that dominated the small, white-walled room.

Her eyes skipped over Khan for the time being, focusing back on the guards. "Out," she said without preamble, looking from one to the next in turn. "I want the room."

One of them—the senior of the team, she assumed—broke focus, brows dipping in a frown. "We have orders…"

"Which I'm countermanding," Duval cut in, all her considerable resolution directed entirely on the self-appointed spokesman. "So get out."

"This is against protocol, Lieutenant."

Duval arched a brow at him, unimpressed and showing it. "And if I was subject to your protocols that might mean something to me. But I'm not, so it doesn't." She stepped to the side, activating the manual control on the door so that it hissed open again. "Now follow directions like the good little grunts that you are and get the hell out of my interrogation room."

Still no one moved, though they were all now exchanging looks of uncertainty.

Duval sighed deeply. Shifting the folder from her right hand to her injured left hand, she reached behind her back and under her shirt, drawing her phaser from its holster. She leveled it on the man who fancied himself in charge, her expression dark and full of ruthless promise. "I need to speak to the Commander privately. So either you walk out this door now or I will knock every single one of your uncooperative asses out cold."

The head goon, smart enough to recognize that it was no idle threat, glared at her even as he motioned for his fellows to move out and followed behind them as they all followed his direction. He paused just at the edge of the door, turning to give Duval a withering look. "I'm going straight to Admiral Marcus about this."

Duval, arm lowered but weapon still in hand, just smiled. "Oh, by all means," she encouraged. "But before you do, allow me to point out that I have a very long memory, questionable morals and the proven ability to make men much more dangerous than yourself disappear without a trace. If I were you, I'd think twice about giving me a reason to hold a grudge."

Security peon number one stared down at her for another long moment before his shoulders dropped and he gave a short, sharp nod before hurrying out the door with his bravado tucked between his legs. Duval re-holstered her weapon and then activated the door once again, punching in the override code that would keep any unwanted visitors out, just in case tall, blonde and nameless was dumber than he looked. With that done, she turned around to face the remaining occupant of the room.

And he was looking right at her, pale blue eyes studying her intently and expression utterly inscrutable.

Squaring her metaphorical shoulders—her physical ones were already straight and proud—she limped across the room, pulled out the chair on the opposite side of the table and eased herself into it as gracefully as she could with her regrettably limited range of motion. Head coming up, she met his gaze head on and without even a hiccup of hesitation.

_Best to start slowly, _she decided.

"First things first," she said, voice as controlled as the rest of her, "I owe you an apology."

His reaction was almost non-existent, and if she hadn't been watching him as close as she was, she never would have seen it—but his left eyebrow had definitely twitched. A tell?

"Do you?"

She inclined her head ever so slightly. "I took my cues from the Admiral without realizing his intentions. If I'd known that his whole purpose in orchestrating that meeting was to tweak your nose, I wouldn't have played along. That's not my style."

"Is it not?"

If this was going to work at all, she was going to need more from him than monosyllables. She mentally rolled up her sleeves.

"You were right, you know—I didn't have enough facts to properly grasp the situation and it was irresponsible of me to assume that I did."

His chin came up, eyes narrowing as a now familiar sneer curled his lips. "But you do _now, _yes? Your blindness has been swept away and suddenly, miraculously you can see the _truth _of me. I daresay you would go so far as to say that you even _understand _me. Tell me, Lieutenant, have I the right of it or have I missed a line or two?"

There; much better.

"I don't appreciate you putting words in my mouth."

"And yet you allow the inestimable Admiral Marcus to pen the fiction of your very existence." He shook his head, feigning disappointment. "Tell me, Lieutenant Rebecca Duval, can you even recognize the lies as they trip off your tongue anymore? Or have you become so infected by their poison that you actually believe them?"

She had been so right to go her own way—he'd been anticipating the Admiral's game down to the smallest detail. Leaning back in her chair, she offered up a self-deprecating grin and shrugged one shoulder negligently.

"For what it's worth, I've told you nothing but the truth since I walked in this room."

He let out a harsh bark of laughter, arms rising from his lap to rest on the table in front of him, palms flat against the cold, steel surface. He leaned forward slightly, eyes blazing fire-bright. "Oh but that _was _good—earthy and earnest and sweet; a calculated response designed to wring sympathy from even the hardest of hearts and were I a different man, it may even have worked. But I am not a different man and I can see through your lies; through _you_, straight to the heart of you. And I know exactly what you truly are…" He paused, chin coming up as he regarded her down the length of his nose, haughty now. "You are a tool, Lieutenant Duval—a blunt object wielded clumsily by lesser beings playing at power."

It was amazing how easy it was _not _to rise to the bait now that she knew the particulars of the man wielding the hook. "Really? I'm as bad as all that?"

"You are worse even still. Tool, instrument, puppet, pawn—I could go on and on but I fear I would run out of adjectives long before I ran out of disdain." He leaned even farther across the table, the warm, rolling baritone of his voice providing a discordant counterpoint to the viciousness in his eyes. "You believe you are impressive and clever because your master has _told _you that you are impressive and clever. He has painted you a lioness and you sit here before me convinced it is the truth while you mouth your practiced lines and smile your scripted smiles and all the while your meager mind lacks the self-awareness to recognize that you are nothing more than a dancing monkey, waltzing to his tune."

Well. He certainly didn't pull his punches.

Duval watched him through narrowed eyes, wanting nothing more than to wipe that smug satisfaction off his ridiculously handsome face. Despite that and beneath the annoyance that pricked at her, vindication wound its way into and around her, and it was sweet. She really had been _so _very right—The Admiral's plan would have been a burning, utterly unsalvageable wreck after that wicked diatribe—the venomously brilliant man sitting across from her would never have given her even a modicum of trust had she played the falsely-sympathetic friendly she'd been intended to.

"Moved as I am by your insights into my character," she said at length, once she'd mastered the desire to tell him what he could do with himself, and if her annoyance bled through into her voice, she thought she could be forgiven just this once, "there are several very important things that I need to discuss with you. So if you're done belittling my existence, do you think maybe we could move on to more pressing matters?"

"By all means," he leaned back in his seat, haughty and too satisfied by half, and invited her to continue with an elegant unfurling of wrist and fingers.

She lifted the folder from her lap and held it up in front of her.

"I was handed this with strict orders that it was for my eyes only and that it was to be destroyed after reading." She set it down on the table in front of her. "It contains every scrap of information available on you."

He snorted out a bitter laugh. "Does it indeed? I do so hope that Commander John Harrison proved an entertaining read, Lieutenant."

"Oh, it was riveting stuff, I assure you," she tapped the folder twice with the tip of her finger. "You're a fascinating case."

He smiled back, the same wolf grin he'd turned on her once before. "I assure _you_, Lieutenant…you really have no idea."

Kill shot time.

_Ready…_

"Despite what you think, I'm not really the stay on script type. And I'm getting ready to break just about every rule in the book," she said as she flattened her palm against the folder, choosing her words with care, "because I believe that Admiral Marcus is handling you and this whole situation entirely the wrong way."

If that eyebrow twitch meant what she was starting to believe that it did, she was doing this exactly right.

_Aim…_

"As you so graciously guessed, I was very specifically directed on how to interact with you. I'm supposed to tell you that I've been assigned to you as a handler—that it's my job to make sure you do everything that the Admiral requires you to do. And, to a certain extent, that's actually the truth. However, it's only part of the story. While I'm making sure you jump through Marcus' hoops, I'm also supposed to learn you. To earn your trust and to be anything that I need to be in order to—in the Admiral's words—secure your loyalty. He even went so far as to suggest that I should seduce you."

Again, that short, sharp bark of laughter.

She wasn't going to lie—that stung a bit, and Duval looked down before he could see that it did and brushed a few imaginary crumbs from the front flap of the folder.

"But I'm not going to do any of that."

She definitely had his attention now; she could almost hear that big, designed-for-perfection brain of his churning.

Lifting her eyes back to his, she very deliberately slid the folder across the table to him and he immediately snapped out a hand to take possession of it, flipping it open before she'd even finished pulling her empty fist back to her side of the table. The picture she'd studied so closely lay immediately on top and she could see the moment his eyes found it—his face went blank and his entire body went tense.

_Fire…_

"I have no doubt that the Admiral's plan would have worked like a charm on Commander John Harrison. But I doubt very much that it's got a chance in hell of getting me anywhere with the Tyrant of Asia."

He threw his head back and the look he gave her set her teeth on edge as every ounce of that fierce focus was centered entirely upon her; she'd seen fire in his eyes before, but this…this was an inferno.

"You know who I am."

_Bullseye._

If it was possible, his voice had gone deeper than she'd yet heard it and there was a roughness to it that she could feel up and down the length of her spine like tiny, tingling pinpricks. Somehow, she done it—she'd actually done what she set out to do and he hadn't seen it coming. But…she couldn't be too proud of herself. She couldn't help but feel the tiniest bit discomfited by the look on his face, that same wretched rawness that he'd worn as they'd escorted him from Marcus' office.

Her soft-streak really did have horribly inconvenient timing.

Brushing it off as she'd done plenty of times in the past, she nevertheless sought to sound as genuine as she possibly could—an easy task for once; because for once, she actually meant it. "I know who you are…_Khan."_

At the sound of his name, he went utterly still, though his eyes continued to blaze. "You know _what _I am."

The air in the room had changed suddenly, the entire atmosphere going thick and tense with anticipation. For the first time since she'd walked into the room, unease began to twist itself into several very large knots in her stomach.

"I do."

"The Admiral has told you _everything _then."

He was watching her far more closely than he had before, constantly shifting eyes following every slight shift, every breath. There was a coolness to those words that felt very at odds with the heat of everything he's said before; a deliberation to his expression that sent a jolt of unease through her stomach.

And suddenly, she knew that this answer was the most important one of all. He was almost rigid with tension, waiting for her answer with such focused fury that she felt like she was standing on the edge of a very high cliff. Worst of all, she had no idea what answer he wanted—no idea what answer would be the right one.

_You started this with truth, _she told herself, and even her internal voice was shaking, _you may as well end it with the same._

"I'm not sure I know what you mean," she said, and there wasn't even a trace of discomposure in her voice. "If you mean he handed me that folder, told me to read it and gave me an overview of how they found you, then yes…he told me everything. But…"

"You know how they found me?"

She didn't know how, but she'd gone and made it worse. For the second time that day, he was looking at her like he wanted to kill her and she had absolutely no idea why. Hands coming up in front of her in a placating gesture, she shook her head and tried very hard not to start hyperventilating.

"The Admiral wasn't exactly forthcoming with details, but I know your ship was found by a scouting ship and that you were in cryosleep and that…"

She left off with a shriek as suddenly, and with all the speed of a striking snake, Khan shot to his feet and literally _threw_ the table between them to the side, the heavy steel slamming into the reinforced walls with a resounding crack. Instincts kicking in, Duval leapt to her feet, injuries forgotten in the rush of adrenaline. Before she could move, he was on her, one large hand wrapped tight around her throat, the force of his advance lifting her off her feet and propelling her backwards.

Her back hit the wall hard, jarring her already injured ribs and bringing tears to her eyes. She blinked them away even as she gasped for breath, her good hand coming up to grip the forearm that strained above the hand squeezing her neck just hard enough to make breathing difficult. "Please," she gasped, her voice thin and reedy; desperate. The cool, polished Agent who had begun this exchange with him was gone and in its place was a woman who knew without a doubt that she was in way over her head. "Please…I don't understand…"

"Oh, but you _are _well-trained," his voice was almost a caress, a dark, low rumble in her ear that—despite the circumstances—sent a shudder straight through her. He was leaning into her, pinning every inch of her to the wall with every inch of him. His mouth was at her ear, his face pressed against the side of hers, a parody of an embrace. "I very nearly believe you—I very nearly _want _to. You plead so prettily that I could almost forget that you are a professional liar."

Duval stared at the ceiling, tears running down her face despite her best efforts to contain them. "Yes," she agreed, fighting to speak. "But I…haven't lied…to you."

He chuckled darkly. "Your dedication to the role is impressive, Lieutenant," he tightened his grip ever so slightly, "but unwise. Drop it now and tell me where…they…are."

The last three words had come out as a hiss, each one punctuated by a pointed shake that left her feeling like a ragdoll. The scariest part of all—she could _feel _the strength that he wasn't using; could feel just how much he was holding back. Remembering the chair, she thought she should be thankful, but couldn't quite manage it around the gut-churning fear.

Distantly, she heard the telltale signs of commotion on the other side of the door. If it was a rescue in progress, she rather hoped they'd hurry it up a smidge.

"I don't…understand," she croaked, trying very hard not to panic, to keep him talking and buy herself even a little bit more time. "I don't…know…what…"

"My crew," he growled the word directly into her ear. "I want my crew. Where are they?"

They were banging on the door now, hard.

Duval was shaking her head as best she could, denying his words. "No…crew. Was just…you…on the ship."

"Liar!" He roared the word, lifting her away from the wall before slamming her back into it again, only now he was directly in front of her, looming over her, his forehead nearly pressed to hers as he glared down into her wide, terrified eyes. "Are you truly willing to die to protect Marcus' grand design? Because I _will _kill you, Lieutenant—make no mistake about that. You will tell me where they are being held or I will keep squeezing until your neck snaps like a twig between my fingers."

"I'm…not…lying!" Duval spat the words with every shred of conviction she could muster. "I don't…know where…they are."

She had no choice but to look at him, and so she saw it…the slightest twitch of his left eye. The hand at her throat loosened ever so slightly. "Again," Khan snarled, "say it again!"

Sucking air into her lungs, Duval leaned forward until their foreheads actually were touching. "I don't know where they are." Her voice was a raspy croak and she desperately wanted a drink of water, but she refused to look away from his eyes. "I'm not lying to you. I _haven't _lied to you."

Khan reared back from her with another foreign curse at the same moment that the door hissed open.

They came into the room firing. Four phaser blasts echoed off the walls and she watched Khan drop, crashing to his knees with a grunt of pain. His entire security detail was on him in a flash, the four of them tackling him the rest of the way to the floor.

She closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall and sucking down slow, steady breaths and trying very hard not to throw up; the adrenaline spiking through her system playing havoc with her stomach now that the immediate threat had passed. After a long moment, her hearing—which had gone slightly fuzzy—cleared and she realized that someone was yelling.

She cracked an eye open, then closed it again.

The someone, apparently, was Admiral Marcus.

And he wasn't just yelling in general…he was yelling at _her_.

"…hope it was worth it because you are done, Duval. Done! You disobeyed direct orders and revealed eyes-only information to a subject and I will have your ass for this! I'll bust you so far back you'll be saluting _ensigns_! It's a desk for you from now on, Duval…you'll be chained to the fucking thing from now until the day you die…"

"You will not."

Khan's voice, strong and deep and vibrating with fury, cut through the Admiral's tirade like nothing else could have. Marcus stopped mid-sentence, turning to look down at Khan, who was once again on his knees, hands shackled tightly behind his back. "Excuse me, _Commander_?"

"You heard me, _Admiral_," he shook off the hands that were attempting to lift him to his feet and pushed himself upright unaided. "You will not punish her and you certainly will not replace her on this assignment. Attempt to do so and I will, I promise you, play merry hell with whichever puling, slack-jawed imbecile you offer in recompense."

The Admiral, once a raging tower of righteous fury, deflated slightly, confusion eating away at his anger. "What the hell are you talking about, Harrison?"

Duval, her eyes on Khan, frowned. What _was _he talking about?

Khan sighed and shot Marcus a look of utter loathing, his shoulders square and his chin high and really, he looked far more impressive than a man in shackles had any right to look. "Really, Admiral, I find myself continually amazed by the deadly dullness of your dishwater mind. I will say this once and you will listen and you will act accordingly. I will work with no Agent save Lieutenant Duval. Not now—not ever. Was that clear enough for you, Admiral?"


	5. Chapter 5

**somewhere i have never travelled**

**Alethnya**

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_ -ee cummings_

* * *

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

**A/N: Shorter, transitional chapter this time. I hope to have Chapter 6 finished before the weekend. As always, thank you for the reviews/follows/favorites! Shout out to my beta—I 3 you, Xaraphis!**

* * *

**Chapter 5**

By the time 2300 rolled around, Duval was feeling about as horrible as she'd ever felt in her entire life—and she wasn't just talking about the fact that her entire body felt like one, giant, aching bruise.

Once Khan had made his declaration that he'd work with no one but her, the Admiral had very quickly had him removed from the room and taken back to the holding cell he'd been calling home for several days past. The room had felt strangely empty once he'd gone, but Duval had immediately chalked that up to the simple fact that Khan Noonien Singh was the kind of personality that took up every bit of spare space in any room he stepped into.

She hadn't had long to ponder the subject though before Marcus had laid back into her, tearing her up one side, down the other, around the back and through the front. She'd listened, passively, as he enumerated her offenses in language so colorful that she would normally have found it entertaining. But her ribs were on fire, her arm throbbed, her head felt like it was about to explode, she could barely swallow through the painful swelling at her throat and all she really, really wanted to do was find a quiet place to curl up and lick her wounds like the thoroughly kicked dog she felt like.

When the Admiral had finished with her flaying, storming from the room on the wings of truly self-righteous fury, he'd left his final words ringing in her ears.

_I don't forget and I don't forgive, Duval. Remember that._

As if she hadn't known that before. As if she hadn't given a single thought to any of that before doing what she'd done. Eventually, given enough time and distance, she knew she would be able to make the Admiral see that there had been good, solid sense behind her actions. Hell, in all honesty, it had worked far better than she'd imagined it would, despite how spectacularly it appeared to have gone wrong.

She wasn't fool enough to think that she'd already gained Khan's trust—she had a hard time believing that he possessed any to give in the first place. But she had made so much of the right kind of impression that he was refusing to work with anyone _but _her—hadn't that been exactly what the Admiral had wanted when he assigned her to him?

Of course, she knew that wasn't the Admiral's real issue with what had been passed between them. He had _not _wanted her to know about Khan's crew. She understood it to a certain extent—Marcus knew her well enough to know that she would disapprove of using people as collateral. However, if he knew her that well, he should also have been well aware that she was pragmatic enough to understand the necessity behind the action and loyal enough to overlook the moral objections for the sake of the greater good. Hell, it certainly wasn't the first time she'd had to set aside her principals for the sake of the work.

Hopefully, if she could handle this mission well enough to fight her way back into the Admiral's good graces, it wouldn't be the last time either.

The rest of the day had been a bit of a blur, though most of it had been spent buried under a thin blanket on a narrow bunk in one of the tiny rooms set aside for Agents who needed a bit of rest while still on the job. She been woken up just after 2100 by the unapologetically loud arrival of her bags and had drug herself out of bed and spent the remaining time freshening up as best she could.

Now, it was 2245 and she was limping through the otherwise deserted Bromley Spaceport toward the gate where the ship that would take them to the Io Facility was waiting. And just in front of the door that would take her onto the ship, Security Goon Number One stood, looking entirely too pleased with himself.

Duval stopped in front of him, lips pressed into a line of annoyance. "Please tell me," she rasped, "that you aren't tagging along."

His shit eating grin widened. "Oh no worries there, Agent Duval—I'm just here to make sure you get on the ship. After that, you're on your own with Commander Harrison, just like you wanted."

Well that was interesting. She'd assumed they would be travelling with a security detail appropriate to the Admiral's level of distrust for her new charge. That they weren't was, she knew, a message meant for her rather than any sudden bloom of confidence in Khan's cooperation. She was being thrown to the wolves, so to speak, and it told her loud and clear just how far she had fallen in the Admiral's eyes.

Strangely, she was fine with it. Her opinion of the Admiral had taken something of a nosedive over the past twelve hours as well so his disapproval didn't carry nearly the weight that it would have before. Besides that, there was also the fact that she was now intimately aware of how pointless a security detail would be should Khan decide to renege on whatever deal he had struck with Marcus. If he truly tried to free himself, she had very little doubt that he would and could do it with very little trouble.

Eyeing Security Goon Number One—really, it was as good a nickname as any since she couldn't be bothered to find out his actual name—she wondered if he had any idea of how lucky he was that Khan hadn't even tried to fight back. If she'd felt better, she probably would have thoroughly enjoyed making the point and taking the arrogant little shit down a peg or two. But she really was feeling about as miserable as she'd ever felt in her entire life so she just huffed out a deep sigh and gave him a bland, unimpressed look. "Are my bags already on board?"

Security Goon Number One nodded, still smiling. "They were delivered along with Harrison. You're all set to take off, Lieutenant."

"Great," she muttered, starting past him. "Thanks _so _much for all your invaluable help."

"My pleasure, Lieutenant," he called to her retreating back. "Have a _fantastic_ time out there."

She paused, having heard far more in that simple sentence than the words alone suggested. She half-turned back toward him, as fake a smile as she could manage curving her lips. "Oh, I will. And fuck you too."

Turning back, she started forward with as much dignity as her flagging strength would allow, temper piquing at the cocksure laughter that followed her as she went. She hoped the prick enjoyed himself now, because if she ever saw him again, she was going to show him just how little a laughing matter she actually was.

Now thoroughly pissed off on top of the exhaustion and the hurting like absolute hell, Duval boarded the transport ship, walked right past the crewman waiting to welcome her aboard and headed straight back to the passenger hold. She'd been aboard this particular ship more than once so she knew her way around. A small, de-commissioned Federation vessel that had been quietly procured for Section use, it was used primarily to ferry personnel back and forth between Earth and the Io Facility. It wasn't a long trip, so the accommodations tended toward Spartan—unpadded seats, heavy belts with old fashioned buckles and very little leg room—but at that point, anything sounded better than staying on her feet.

The door to the passenger hold hissed open ahead of her and she limped inside, ignoring the faint fluttering of nerves at what she knew was waiting for her on the other side.

And speak of the devil.

He stood on the opposite side of the room looking almost exactly as he had in the picture she'd tossed into an incinerator along with the rest of the folder of information Marcus had given her—booted feet shoulder-width apart, arms folded across his chest, head held high; a great, menacing black shadow despite glare of the too-bright overhead lights.

Duval knew that she should be uncomfortable; nervous about facing the man who had come very close to killing her with his bare hands. But she simply…wasn't. Not really. There was that same nervous fluttering she'd felt before she walked into the room, but she knew that had less to do with what had happened in particular and everything to do with who he was in general.

Knowing what she did—knowing what Marcus was using against him—she could forgive him what happened in Interrogation 3. More than that, she wasn't sure there was actually anything to forgive him for in the first place. She doubted she would have reacted any differently were she to find herself in the same situation.

So instead of cowering like he'd probably expected her to do, she simply offered him a curt nod before picking the closest seat and easing herself down into it, gritting her teeth against the screaming of her ribs as she did. She was definitely going to have to pay a visit to medical once they reached Io as apparently getting thrown into a wall hadn't at all agreed with her very recently knit bones. She sat for a long moment with her eyes closed, head against the seat, taking slow, shallow breaths and trying to will away the pain for just a little bit longer. Another few hours and she would have painkillers and a bed and she would take full advantage of both—ridiculous, destined-for-failure mission be damned.

"I had forgotten how easily breakable humans are."

Amazingly, that hadn't sounded half as condescending as she thought it should. Forcing her eyes open, she met his gaze, unsurprised at being able to read absolutely nothing of what was going on behind that shock of blue. "Yeah?" she rasped, her voice sounding worse and worse the more tired she got. "Lucky me to get to serve as the reminder."

He snorted, and _there_ was the derision she'd expected. "You sound appalling."

She shot him a glare as she carefully slid her arms under the belts in preparation for takeoff. "And whose fault is that?"

He stiffened; back snapping just ever so much straighter. "I will notapologize."

The words were fierce and staccato. She would have said defensive as well, but she figured that was just her tiredness talking. Regardless of _how_ he'd said it, the fact that he'd felt the need to say it at all struck her as just about the funniest thing she'd ever heard. So she laughed. A lot.

She laughed loud and long and it hurt like an absolute _bitch_, but she was so far beyond exhausted that she physically couldn't stop herself. "I'm sorry," she choked out around the almost delirious glee, "but that was just…" she shook her head, swallowed hard and used that fresh pain to contain her inappropriately exuberant mirth. "That was really funny."

He was looking at her now with a mixture of annoyance and faint but discernible discomfort—not used to dealing with the punch-drunk ramblings of lesser beings, she imagined. "It was not meant to be _funny,_" he spat the word like it had personally offended him—probably had, now that she thought about it. "It is a truth you would do well to remember if we are to have any hope of playing out this farce with any modicum of success—one does not apologize to the ant beneath their boot and nor shall I apologize to you."

Just that quickly, it wasn't very funny anymore and Duval's laughter melted away in the furious heat of his pointed gaze. Eyes sliding away from his, she focused on getting herself locked in for a moment before trusting herself to respond.

"I don't actually recall asking for an apology," she ground out as she pulled the safety restraints as tight as she could stand under the circumstances. She huffed out as deep a breath as she could, suddenly feeling completely drained. "Look, I know I'm probably reaching for the moon here, but could we possibly just…not do this right now? We're going to have more than enough time to be horrible to each other once we reach Io. But for now, could we maybe just, I don't know, _play_ nice?"

"I am not _nice_."

"No, you're not, and I have the bruises on my neck to prove it, thank you very much," she shot back, fighting now to stay awake against the delicious pull of sleep. "I don't really mind though," she was losing the battle, her eyelids drooping despite her best efforts even as she kept on rambling. "I'm not nice either—not really. Everyone says so; something about me being a heartless bitch or somesuch…anyway…nevermind. Doesn't matter. But yeah, I'm not nice and you're not nice and I think we'll get along just _famously_."

"Will we?"

Her eyes had drifted shut and she knew she was officially gone because he sounded amused and she knew that just wasn't possible. "Probably not, no. But that's ok. I don't like liking people. Complicates things." She tilted her head against the seat back and gave up the fight against the sucking tidal wave of exhaustion just as the ships engines whirred to life. "G'night."

He didn't say it back. She wasn't surprised.


	6. Chapter 6

**Somewhere I Have Never Travelled**

**Alethnya**

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_ -ee cummings_

* * *

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

**A/N: Ok, so…this chapter took WAY longer than I had anticipated. At first, it just didn't want to come out. Then, it wouldn't STOP coming out. Apologies for the delay and thanks so very much for all the reviews/follows/faves. They make the writing so much more rewarding!**

**As always, shout out to my beta—I 3 you, Xaraphis!**

* * *

**Chapter 6**

_Io Facility_

Being who and what she was, waking up had never been a particularly arduous process for Duval. On the contrary, if one were to judge that sort of thing, she was actually really, really good at it. She could go from deep sleep to full awake in an instant, a switch that she could flick with unthinking ease.

So this…this was different.

Never before in her entire life had waking up been this difficult. Consciousness hovered just out of reach but she fought for it, struggling to break through the thick, sucking fog that shrouded her brain. Distantly, she knew that this was not, in any way, normal—that there was more to this than her having simply been exhausted.

Eventually—_finally_—she managed to peel her eyes open and pull herself mostly upright, back propped firmly against the plain, steel headboard of the narrow bed. She brought her hands up and scrubbed them over her face even as her lips parted in a jaw-cracking yawn. Then her hands slid up, over her forehead and into her hair, pushing the rat's nest it had become up and off of her face, relieved to see that her surroundings were at least familiar. She'd spent enough time at the facility to recognize the austere décor of Io's crew quarters straight off.

Several slow blinks later, she squinted against even meager light issuing from the overheads—a soft, pinkish glow along the middle of the wall that faded up into pale violet along the ceiling. The station ran on Earth time and the environmental settings controlled the ambient light accordingly. Being familiar with the particular settings that Admiral Marcus had himself dictated for Io, she knew that this configuration denoted dusk—somewhere around 1900, was her best guess.

So she knew where she was and she knew what time it was, which only left about a hundred more questions clawing their way up through the mire in her mind, desperate for an answer. The last thing she remembered—and only vaguely at that—was waking when they landed to find Khan watching her. No…not watching; that was too mild a word for it. _Studying_. He had been studying her as if she was a problem that needed solving. From his perspective, she supposed that wasn't too far off from the truth. She remembered that she'd said something…something about needing to go to sickbay. He had frowned then, she had an oddly clear memory of how his dark brows had furrowed and he'd almost looked…put out. Then she'd stood up and after that, nothing.

Glancing down at herself now, at the same clothes she'd been wearing when she boarded the Io transport, at the boots still upon her feet, she rather suspected that she'd never actually made it to sickbay. But somehow, she _had _made it here. How that came about—_why_ that came about—she wasn't actually certain she wanted to know.

She got the distinct feeling that she wasn't going to like the answers to either of those questions.

Thinking hard, trying desperately to dig up even the smallest shred of memory to help remind herself, she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, chewing at it none too gently; an old habit. And one that it suddenly occurred to her should have been more than a little painful, given the state of her lip the last time she'd seen it.

She retracted her teeth, replacing them with her fingers and felt…nothing. Her slow, careful exploration found nothing at all except for the smooth curve of her lip. No split, no scabbing, no pain. No injury at all.

Duval sucked in a sharp breath, bringing her other hand up to her face, questing fingers dancing up to her brow, down to her neck, over her arms, across her mid-section and then down further still to her leg—all with the same results.

Nothing.

Adrenaline spiked, burning through the last of her mental haze like the sun through mist and she launched herself out of the bed with a strangled yelp, almost tripping over the sheets that tangled about her feet as she charged out the door of the bedroom into the common living space beyond and then into the bathroom. The lights came up automatically and she planted her hands on either side of the sink, staring with amazement at her reflection in the mirror above.

Nothing.

Not the slightest hint of bruising or injury. Not a single scar to be seen. She leaned in even closer, eyes narrowing in stunned disbelief. Because not only was there no _new _scarring, there was no _old _scarring either. The puckered patch of silver on the underside of her chin from where she'd fallen out of a tree when she was eight…gone. The small, ragged line just at the edge of her hairline where her Academy sparring partner's too-long-for-regulation fingernails had caught her when she'd bobbed just a second too late…vanished.

She pulled back from the sink, pulling back her sleeves, yanking up her pant legs—nearly falling over as she tore her boots off; seeking out and yet finding none of the myriad scars that had marked her—each one telling the tale of one adventure or another and each one gone as if it had never been there.

Duval stood up, eyes meeting those of her reflection in the mirror, her breath coming hard and fast and her heart thumping hard in her chest. There was still more to check…still more to examine…

Without letting herself think about it any further, she tore the loose tunic off, eyes skimming her torso in the mirror, looking for the jagged scar just below the edge of her simple, black bra that she'd worn as a reminder since her second year as an Agent; the result of a negotiation gone horribly wrong and ending with her on entirely the wrong end of her own knife. Erased, like all the rest.

She sucked in a deep breath. Only a bit more now…and she just couldn't believe it…couldn't imagine it would be possible…

She spun around, putting her back to the mirror. She stared hard at the wall, blinking furiously against tears as she fought to control the twisting in her stomach. Blowing out a long, slow breath, she snapped her head back around, twisting as far as she could so that she could catch sight of herself in the mirror, dreading the sight of the long, thin marks that she'd spent her entire adult life trying so damn _hard _to escape from…

But they weren't there either. There was nothing there. Nothing except a smooth, blank expanse of skin where once had lived a lattice work of silver lines, the tinderbox result of a rebellious young girl who had lost her parents too young and a bitter old man who looked at her and saw the man who had cost him his only daughter.

For several long heartbeats, she just stared, numb. She thought about laughing…but that felt wrong. She considered crying…still wrong. In the end, she just went with the only thing that felt right.

"What the absolute _fuck_?"

"Really, Lieutenant…such language."

Duval froze, muscles going tight as a bowstring. _Khan_. She hadn't spared a thought for where he was or what he was doing and she certainly hadn't expected to find him in her quarters. But then, were they _only _her quarters? Most of Io's crew housing was single occupancy though the quarters themselves were built for double—the result of such a small full-time crew manning such a large facility.

If Marcus had made the arrangements—which, _of course_ he had—then joint quarters would make sense. Especially in light of his plans regarding her…association…with his pet superman.

"If you have finished gawking at yourself and your decided _lack _of injury, join me in the sitting room. We have a great deal to discuss."

Dear _God, _that voice. That delectable invitation of a voice…she could only imagine the effect it would have if he ever managed to say something halfway nice.

_I am not __**nice**_.

The memory of those words struck her, followed by the further, though slightly muddled, memory of her own rambling incoherence. She flinched, dropping her chin toward her chest in mortification—allowable, this once, as there was no one in the room to see it. Christ Almighty, the things she'd said!

Khan had considered her an insect before—how much further had she been downgraded after rambling on like a head case? She could just picture herself, hovering somewhere around paramecium on his sliding scale of utter idiocy.

Because her job hadn't been near to fucking impossible already. Lovely.

"Or," Khan's voice rang out again, sounding less than pleased, "I suppose you could hide in the washroom indefinitely. The choice is, of course, yours, Lieutenant."

His cutting sarcasm was exactly what she needed. It gave her the shot of belligerence she needed to brush away the shock, the amazement, the embarrassment, shifting it all down, down, down in her thoughts, tucking everything away out of sight and locking it up tight. When the weight of all those competing emotions had eased, her head came up and she stepped quickly and purposefully out into the living room.

And there he was, looking as cool and collected as she remembered as he sprawled on the sofa, surrounded by schematics and diagrams and several different PADD's, including the one he currently held in his hands. His eyes were on the device in his hands and she could see them dancing back and forth, devouring the words on the screen at breakneck speed—far, _far _quicker than she had ever seen anyone read before.

It was impressive, but him being him, she rather suspected she was just going to have to get used to things like that. They were, after all, going to be seeing a lot of each other. Far more than even she had anticipated, given what she suspected about their living arrangements.

But now wasn't the time for that. Now was the time for answers, because she was fairly drowning in questions. Most importantly…

"What the hell happened to me?"

Khan's eyes flicked up, impatience burning in his pale blue gaze—impatience that almost immediately turned to something very much like surprise before snapping almost violently back to irritation. "Decided to take the Admiral's route after all, have we, Lieutenant?"

That had been truly vicious. The words themselves were innocuous, but the tone…he'd downright _snarled_ it at her, each syllable absolutely fraught with ferocity. She narrowed her eyes at him. "Excuse me?"

His mouth—too sensuous by half for a man as hard as he was—compressed, lips pressing into a hard, thin line and the already ridiculously prominent sweep of his cheekbones sharpened as he clenched his jaw. Then his eyes flicked swiftly and deliberately downward, caught and hung there for a long moment, and then dragged back up to hers, the look in them the oddest mixture of reluctant admission and furious resentment. Duval frowned in confusion before taking his lead and dropping her own gaze to…

Oh.

_Oh._

"Oh for fuck's sake," she hissed, lunging back into the bathroom and snatching up her shirt from where she'd dropped it on the floor. All that horrifying embarrassment came roaring back and she jammed her arms into the sleeves of the shirt as if it was personally responsible for having crawled off her back in the first place. Once it was on, she shoved her feet back into her boots, took one last look in the mirror—decided to ignore the haystack that was her hair for the present because the last thing she wanted him to think was that she was trying to pretty herself up for him _at all_—and then slunk back out into the living area.

He was back to his reading again, though she could still see the tension along his jaw.

"First of all, no…I'm not…that wasn't," she stopped, annoyed with herself and her uncooperative tongue. "I think I've already more than proven that Marcus' plans are _not _my plans. That was…unintentional. I'm sorry if it..."

"Yes, yes," Khan interrupted, still snarling at her, "I _know_, Lieutenant. Do not belabor the point with unnecessary apologies."

She blew out a breath, closed her eyes, determined to center herself. She was stronger than this. She was smart and articulate and perfectly rational and she did not turn into a rambling moron in tense situations. She was Lieutenant Rebecca Duval and she had defied the head of Starfleet himself because she believed her own plans had a better chance of success than his—a supposedly master tactician.

Her chin came up. Her shoulders squared. She opened her eyes.

"I asked you what happened to me, and I would like an answer please. A really, really good answer."

He didn't even glance up at her, eyes still trained on the PADD in his hands. "You were injured, now you are not. Is further explanation truly necessary?"

"It is." Duval rounded the back of the chair that sat between them, throwing herself down onto the seat and leaning forward to brace her elbows on her knees, eyes on his face. "It really, absolutely and completely is. I don't know why and I don't know how, but I do know that you're responsible for this. Don't bother trying to deny it; I won't believe you if you do. You can't do…whatever you did…to me and not _tell_ me!"

Khan huffed—there was no other word for it; an honest to God _huff _of pure exasperation. He lowered the PADD again, eyes finally meeting hers. "Must we do this? I have—however little I like it—_work _that needs doing. I have already lost two days of true progress to your…incapacitation. Must I lose more now to your pointless curiosity? It would be immensely simpler if you would simply accept that I have done you a good turn and move on accordingly."

Duval, for the first time in their short but potent acquaintance, spotted an advantage to be exploited hiding amongst all his grumbling. He'd admitted that he'd lost time due to her condition, which suggested that he needed her for something. Exactly what that could possibly be, she had no idea, but if he was convinced of it, then who was she to argue? Especially as it gave her at least a little bit of workable leverage against a man whose very existence amounted to a perennial upper hand.

"Yeah," she replied, shaking her head and giving him a wry grin, "sorry, but that's really not gonna happen. And if you want to get anything of any substance at all done in the near future, you'll suck it up and start answering because I won't lift a finger to help until I know what happened."

Another huff and Khan dropped the PADD onto the cushion beside him before crossing his arms over his chest, a portrait of petulance. "Go on then," he prompted, "ask your _questions_."

Duval wasn't stupid; she didn't look anywhere near the mouth on this particular gift horse. She dove right on in, head first and eyes open. "You said you'd lost two days…is that how long I was out?"

"Yes."

It was a relief—given the sheer magnitude of the healing that had taken place she'd had some truly troubling scenarios drifting through her head, no matter how improbable. On the other hand, it was also more than a little unnerving. It had only taken two days for the entire map of her body to be re-written. She shuddered to think what he done to make that possible.

Sticking to the simpler stuff to start, she pressed the larger questions to the wayside for just a bit longer.

"I don't remember much, but I know I was headed for sickbay. I never got there, did I?"

"No."

She stared at him expectantly. He stared right back.

"You're going to make this as difficult as possible, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Very mature."

"You asked only for answers. You did not stipulate as to length or breadth."

"Do you want my help or not?"

And to her utter amazement, he simply…deflated. The hardness—the coldness and the anger and the fury—that he had worn like a shroud since the first moment she'd set eyes on him, dissipated. His proud shoulders dropped, his head fell back against the cushion behind it and his eyes slid closed over a pained grimace. He pinched the bridge of his nose between a thumb and forefinger and she could almost see the frustration pouring off of him in waves.

"_Want_, no," he said, and the strain was there in his voice as well, blunting the leading edge of its visceral thrust. "Need…" he let the word hang in the air, then sighed. "You woke when we landed, made a semi-coherent remark about it having been a quick trip followed by a marginally _less _coherent ramble about finding sickbay." He cracked his eyes open, meeting her expectant gaze. "I suspect you were concussed during the more…vigorous…portions of our earlier discussion in the interrogation room."

Duval snorted out a laugh. "Yeah, vigorous was exactly the word I was thinking of when you slammed me into a wall and nearly choked me to death."

His eyes snapped back shut. "I have already said that I will not apologize."

"And I've already said that I don't expect you to," Duval answered, shrugging though he couldn't see it. "Now, back to the story...I said I was heading to sickbay. Why didn't I make it there?"

"Because you hadn't taken two steps before you dropped in a heap, completely unconscious and even more useless than you had been before. It was lucky for you that I had already decided on a course of action for you, one that did not include the involvement of any medical personnel. Thus, your weakness proved my ally. I carried you off the ship, played the concerned comrade to the personnel who came out to meet us and was granted an escort to our shared quarters." Another slit-eyed look. "Marcus is almost disturbingly invested in the seduction scenario he'd envisioned."

Duval's grin was faint and she fought very hard to keep any bitterness out of it. "Lucky for us you're a god and I'm a dancing monkey. Never the twain shall meet and all that, right?"

He hummed noncommittally, though his eyes opened wider and his head lifted, that innate confidence lifting him out of his momentary defeatist posture. "Once I had assured our fretful attendant—a surprisingly green young Ensign called Ferguson who I doubt will last a year under Marcus' command—that all was well and that it really was preferable that he should remove himself from our quarters with all due haste, I put you in bed and set to work," here he paused, and she could tell that he was choosing his words with care, "correcting the situation."

"I guess I should thank you for being polite enough to put me in a bed rather than just dumping me in a corner," she admitted, "but you could have at least taken my boots off."

The look he shot her was eloquent in its derision.

"Right," she said with a sigh, waving off the observation. "Nevermind. Anyway…what does that mean, exactly? How did you correct the situation?"

"I made the untenable, tenable."

"That's not actually an answer," she accused. "_How_ did you make the untenable, tenable?"

"Quite successfully, it would seem."

If she thought it would have done any good at all, she would have screamed. "Stop bullshitting me," she flung the words at him, hard and fast. "You were the one talking about wasted time and now you're wasting even more of it by being evasive."

Khan met her gaze squarely, unapologetically. "I had a hypothesis. I tested the hypothesis. You are better because of it. That is as much of an explanation as I will give on the subject. Accept it or not, that is your prerogative."

He wasn't bluffing. She could hear the finality in his voice. But that was fine, because she suddenly found herself less interested in the particulars. The general concept of the situation was more than enough to be getting on with.

Duval squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, trying very hard not to get as angry as she really, really wanted to. "You…tested…a hypothesis."

"So I said. Do keep up, Lieutenant."

"If it was a hypothesis, that would seem to suggest that you didn't actually know that it—whatever _it _is—would work or not, yes?"

Khan shrugged, negligent in the face of her mounting fury. "I was more than confident that I had the right of it. It was a risk, yes, but a calculated one. I weighed the possibilities and found that the potential benefits far outstripped the possible harm and proceeded thus."

She blew out a breath that turned into a hiss of displeasure. "And if you'd been _wrong? _Do I even want to know what could have happened if your _hypothesis _had proven unsound?"

"As I do not myself know the answer to that, I can hardly say. I suppose you might have died, which clearly is the answer that you are fishing for. But you didn't and therefore, the point is moot."

"You experimented on me, had no idea if it would kill me or not and it never occurred to you that it might be a good idea to discuss it with me first?"

"You were unconscious; discussion was not an option." The bastard didn't even have the courtesy to look even a little bit contrite.

"Then you should have waited until it was!"

"A waste of time," he dismissed, "much like this entire conversation. You are fine, Lieutenant. Better than fine—you are _well_. More importantly, you are _useful. _ Why is that not all that matters?"

"You used me as a lab rat!" And oh, she was truly in a fine frenzy now, every muscle humming with restrained fury and moss green eyes ablaze. "You played God with my _life_ and you think the fact that I'm now _useful_ to you is all that matters? Who the fuck do you think you are?"

Khan went still at that. Very still. She could feel the energy in the room shift, the atmosphere growing thick with the same tension she'd felt once before and she was struck by the extraordinarily vivid memory of his hand around her neck—and by the realization that she had once again managed to thoroughly piss off the most dangerous creature she had ever laid eyes. When he looked up this time, his eyes were blazing—the aloof mask once more stripped away to reveal the inferno that raged beneath.

He stood, slowly and with a dangerous, feline grace that sent a shiver up Duval's spine—a not entirely fearful shiver, at that. He did not advance on her, but she had to fight the urge to retreat anyway. Looming above her, he glared down at her, wrath personified.

"You would do well, _Lieutenant Duval_, to mind…your…tongue." His voice was a dark, roiling thing; a molten flow of sound that felt like it could set the very air on fire. "I have been extraordinarily generous; but my liberality only goes so far. If you continue to push me, I will, I promise you, push back far harder than your well-demonstrated human frailty can endure. This conversation is _over_. I will retire to my room for the night, confident that you will awake on the morrow with the understanding that it is in your best interest to aide me when I ask for it and keep your mouth _shut _when I do not. Have I made myself clear?"

Only an idiot would argue—and she wasn't at all an idiot. But she also had a job to do, even if she found herself in the unknown territory of her subject _knowing _what that job was beforehand. The fact of the matter was though, that she needed to earn his trust. And a man like Khan was never, ever going to extend something as precious as that to someone who cowered before him like a dog.

Bracing herself, knowing full well that she was taking a hell of a risk, but still relying on that little slice of leverage he'd allowed her—_he'd said that he needed her; he didn't say things he didn't mean; he wouldn't have said it if he didn't mean it—_Duval slowly pushed herself up and out of the chair. She straightened to her full height, which was still several inches shorter than him, lifted her chin and looked him square in the eye.

"I'll help you because it's my job. But let _me _make something very clear—I am _not _your slave. I'm not your servant, your subordinate or even your assistant. I will not spend however long this assignment lasts being threatened every time I express an opinion you find offensive. You are brilliant and you are powerful and yes, once upon a time, a whole lot of people bowed down to you. But I'm not one of them and I won't ever _be _one of them."

The room itself held its breath.

For a very long moment, he just stared at her, lips pressed together so hard that there was a thin, white line around his mouth.

"I am Khan Noonien Singh," he hissed, his voice quiet and terrifying. "I ruled an Empire that spanned a quarter of the globe. I could have held the world in the palm of my hand had I so chosen…."

"With all due respect, that was three hundred years ago," Duval interrupted, using every last ounce of nerve she possessed. She didn't sneer, she didn't snap. She just said what she wanted to say, calmly, matter-of-factly. "The world is a much bigger place than it was then. Now…you're just a paragraph in a history book that nobody even bothers to read anymore."

Khan's head jerked backwards, only very slightly, but still…for him...it was a marked retreat. He was looking at her again, that penetrating, studying look that set the hairs on the back of her neck on end. This time, she just watched him right back, holding her composure with nothing but sheer will.

Suddenly and without further comment, he spun away from her, stalking across the room with loping, ground-eating strides before disappearing into the bedroom opposite hers, the door sliding shut behind him with an oddly appropriate hiss. As soon as he was out of sight, Duval crumpled, suddenly shaking legs refusing to hold her up any longer.

She dropped back down into the chair behind her, trembling fingers coming up to rub across her burning cheeks, knowing that she'd done _something_ with her display of spine, but entirely unsure what that _something _was. Success…failure…both loomed before her, neither feeling any closer than the other and she felt sickened by the uncertainty, the doubt.

It—the entire situation—was different; against the grain. Ambiguity was generally an ally that she cultivated with alacrity while on the job. But at that moment, being just as equally on the wrong end of it as he was, she'd never hated anything more.


	7. Chapter 7

**Somewhere I Have Never Travelled**

**Alethnya**

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_ -ee cummings_

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**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

**A/N: Another long chapter full of essential plot development-y **_**stuff**_**. Enjoy!**

**Thank you to all those who have reviewed/favorited/followed! I appreciate every single one of you, though I am, admittedly, atrocious at responding!**

**As always, shout out to my beta—I love you, Xaraphis!**

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**Chapter 7**

Duval woke the next morning absolutely brimming with energy. The lingering lethargy of the previous evening had been swept away entirely by another round of dead-to-the-world sleep and for the first time since the ambiguously successful mission on Capella IV, she felt…_good_.

Better than good.

She felt fucking fantastic. Almost the best she'd ever felt in her entire life.

And if it weren't for the knowledge of how it all had come about—or rather, the distinct lack thereof—hanging over her head, there would have been no _almost _about it. She would have liked nothing more than to just put it behind her, move forward and pretend that nothing remarkable had happened—but unfortunately, there were a few loose ends she would need to tie up before that became possible.

Two loose ends, specifically.

The first, she could deal with immediately. Dr. Carlson—the Chief Medical Officer of the Io facility—would have been notified of her impending arrival, and therefore of her current medical status. Or at least, what had been her current medical status. How exactly she was going to explain the disparity between two days ago and now, she had no idea; but if Duval was good at anything, it was thinking on her feet.

The second…

Marcus needed to know. She'd screwed herself pretty thoroughly with him by going around his orders the way she had, regardless of how necessary it had been to the end he had in mind. If she had a hope in hell of getting herself back into his good graces, she was going to have to go out of her way to smooth his feathers. As little as she wanted to discuss the issue with him, she knew she had to and quickly. He had eyes everywhere and any of them could report back to him at any given time. He needed to hear it from her first.

She would have much preferred to buy herself some time, see if she could figure out _how _Khan had done it. But with as adamant as he had been about telling her nothing else, that simply didn't appear to be a viable option. Marcus wasn't going to like the sketchy explanation, but it would be better than nothing at all in the long run.

So she'd head first to sickbay, then directly to the Facility Commander's office to request a face-to-face with the Admiral in one of the private comm rooms and ready herself for the song and dance she was going to have to put on for the sake of her career.

…_you are nothing more than a dancing monkey, waltzing to his tune…_

Khan's words. Duval pressed her lips together, annoyed not to be able to discount them quite as easily as she had at the time he'd said them.

The bastard.

With her two key tasks in mind, she set about getting herself ready. She braved the silence of the living room, the lure of a hot shower far outstripping her nerves about encountering her reluctant roommate after the drama of the previous evening. To her relief, the living room stood empty and Khan's door remained quite emphatically closed as she tiptoed to the bathroom. After indulging in a longer than normal shower, she made quick work of preparing herself for the day ahead. She'd forgone the looser clothes she'd been wearing during her convalescence, opting instead for her habitual, close-fitting long-sleeved black top and trousers. Her shoulder length hair was twisted up into its customary knot high on the back of her head, her makeup was applied with the light but effective hand that it always was, and once she was done, she looked in the mirror and was relieved to see a much more familiar version of herself staring back at her.

After gathering her things together and making a hurried dash back to her bedroom, she pulled on her boots and made for the main door before her luck ran out and Khan decided to show himself. Once out in the corridor, she breathed out a sigh and started toward sickbay.

Twenty minutes later—after a stop in the mess for a very quick bite to eat—she walked into Carlson's office without bothering to announce herself and planted herself in one of the chairs on the opposite side of the doctor's desk.

"I need to ask you a favor," she said breezily, assuming as unaffected an air as possible.

Carlson, a staid woman of 43 who had been with the Section long enough to know better, took both the unannounced intrusion and the apropos of nothing conversation starter in stride. "And hello to you too, Agent Duval." She set aside her PADD and leaned back in her chair, arms folding across her chest. "I'd heard you were joining us out here in the back of beyond. Lovely to see you and yes, I'm doing quite well, thank you."

Duval smiled. "Good to know. I still need a favor."

The doctor eyed her speculatively through narrowed eyes. "You often do," she said, a tad waspishly but still largely pleasant. "I'd expected you to be in here begging me to revoke at least some of the restrictions Pedregon slapped you with in his last assessment, but oddly enough you don't look like you need any of them at all."

"And thus the favor," Duval said, still smiling. "As you can see, I'm all good. I need you to clear me for full active duty. I've got a lot to do and the limited access that comes with the medical restrictions is liable to become a real pain in the ass."

Carlson gave her a wry grin. "That's certainly easy enough and not really worth calling a 'favor'. I assume the _real _favor you're asking for is in regards to the required physical and psych evals that go along with reassigning you to active duty."

"I don't have time for either," Duval affirmed, abandoning any attempts at double talk. Carlson was too well versed in dealing with covert operatives for it to be necessary. "If it helps, I'll promise to come by and let you run your tests when I do."

"Which will be never, but it's sporting of you to at least make the attempt," Carlson replied, rolling her eyes. "In all honesty, Duval, I'm as much a stickler for protocol as you are—I don't give a damn about it. I've also known you long enough to trust your judgment. If you say you're fine, then you're fine. If you're wrong and it gets you killed, that's your fault, not mine. I certainly won't lose sleep over it." She leaned forward, elbows propped on her desk. "Now, what _does _concern me is that I have to put my name to the status override. To do that, I have to provide a legitimate reason as to _why _I am making the change. What plausible explanation can I give for clearing an Agent who a week ago was barely able to avoid being placed on mandatory medical leave?"

"Oh please," Duval waved away Carlson's concerns, "you know exactly what to do—slap Top Secret Classified on it and you're golden. Now stop being dramatic and clear me, Doc."

"I do that and it automatically goes to Admiral Marcus' office for review and final approval." It was said as a statement but the question mark was implicit.

"Not a problem."

Carlson's look of surprise was unmistakable. "Really?"

Duval tensed, hearing worlds of meaning behind the seemingly simple question. "That's surprising? You know better than most that I have the Admiral's ear."

"_Had_," Carlson corrected, accentuating the word. "You _had _the Admiral's ear, Duval. Rumor has it that things have changed."

Ah. So tongues had been wagging. It was embarrassing and unbelievably annoying but not particularly surprising—for a covert organization, the Section was full of people who didn't know how to keep their damn mouths shut. Duval bit back her immediate response, knowing that a display of temper would do her no favors with the doctor. "A bump in the road," she admitted, "but nothing that will prevent the Admiral from signing off on this. In fact, I plan to speak to him about the situation as soon as I finish here with you. By the time the request hits his desk, he'll be fully aware of the details."

Carlson cocked a brow, clearly chewing on Duval's words. "You're a good Agent, Duval—one of the best, as you well know. More than that, I've always found you to be surprisingly honest, considering your job. But I've worked too long and too hard to get where I'm at. I'll get the status change written up and ready to go, but until I get word from the Admiral himself that it will be approved for classified status, that's as far as it will go."

It wasn't what she'd hoped for, but it was much better than it could have been. Duval gave the doctor a sharp nod. "Deal. Like I said, despite my…misunderstanding with the Admiral, he'll not only be willing to approve it, he'll be eager to. My current assignment is his newest pet project."

At that, Carlson relaxed, leaning back in her chair and exuding once more the guarded friendliness that Duval had always appreciated in her. "Ah yes, Commander John Harrison," she picked up her PADD and turned it so that Duval could see, the personnel file on the man himself glowing on the screen. "I've just been familiarizing myself with our new weapons specialist. His medical history is oddly…spotty; too spotty to be particularly useful. "

Duval looked away from the PADD. "If you're going to suggest that he needs to get up here for a full medical workup, I'm going to suggest that you not even bother. He won't do it."

"You're his handler, aren't you?"

Duval laughed, a choked snort that spoke volumes. "Yeah, trust me when I tell you…that won't mean a damn thing in this instance."

"And here we run into the brick wall of protocol yet again," Carlson sighed. "He's a newly arrived permanent resident of Io. There are reports…"

"Yet another point that I will bring up to the Admiral when I speak to him," Duval assured, standing from her seat. It was time to get the hell out of there before the good doctor could set a match to any more fires that she would have to put out. "But I can promise you this—he'll approve of you overlooking just about every protocol there is where Harrison is concerned."

Carlson didn't stand in return, just gave a shrug. "That's fine if it's true—less work for me, after all. Again though, I'll believe it when I hear it from the Admiral himself."

Ten minutes later, Duval was seated in front of yet another desk—a position she was getting very, very tired of, quite frankly. If there was one thing she hated about her job, it was the politics that went along with it. She was many things, but an office drone was absolutely _not _one of them.

This particular desk belonged to newly appointed Facility Commander Rafael Vazquez. She knew him well, better than just about anyone else in the Section. They'd been at the Academy together, had in fact belonged to the same vague social circle. She wouldn't have called them friends, but they had always been friendly; a fact that she was banking on to make her stay at Io all the easier. Charming wasn't something that she did particularly well, but she could put on a good enough show of it as the situation demanded.

"Becca Duval," the Commander said and she could hear the nostalgia coloring the words…even as she cringed at the old nickname. "It's been far too long!"

Sure. She could go with that.

"It really has," she agreed, smiling at him prettily. "Last I remember you, you were celebrating our Section initiation with too much cheap whiskey and old Catalan folk songs."

Vazquez smiled in return, wide and perfect—a handsome man who knew just how handsome he was. "Something I only vaguely remember myself, for obvious reasons. I do remember you though. You were barely drinking at all…just kept nursing your beer and rolling your eyes at how ridiculous all the rest of us were."

"Oh, I wasn't as bad as all that," Duval denied, coy now. "I just figured _someone _needed to keep their head straight since none of the rest of you were anywhere close to sober. It was a good thing I did too—or had you blacked out by the time Radcliffe and Hughes decided to pick a fight with three very large men with very bad tempers?"

The Commander narrowed his eyes, clearly looking back in his memory. After a long moment, he let out a bark of laughter. "Was that where Radcliffe's broken nose came from?"

Duval smirked. "No. That was all me."

Vazquez shook his head but couldn't wipe the grin off his face. "Christ, Becca…you wonder why just about everyone thought you were a bitch!"

Ten years ago, that would have stung. Now, she didn't even flinch.

"If the piss drunk idiot had known when to shut his mouth, I wouldn't have had to do it for him," she dismissed, already growing bored with this little stroll down memory lane. She met the Commander's eyes, all her false cheer melting away. "And I never once wondered why people called me a bitch, Commander."

To his credit, Vazquez saw the change—recognized it immediately and reacted accordingly. Before her eyes, his entire demeanor changed until she was sitting in front of the Facility Commander and not an old Academy buddy. "No, I don't suppose you would," he acknowledged with a nod. "Now, as fun as it is to reminisce, I assume you had something much more important in mind when you asked to see me."

Firmly back on more professional ground, Duval relaxed into the conversation. "I did, sir," the honorific feeling only right now that they were back to business. "First, I need access to one of the private comms."

Vazquez nodded like it was no more than he had expected. "To speak to Admiral Marcus, I'm sure. That's no problem. In fact, as soon as I was briefed on your assignment, I set you up with a personal access code to the private comms—you can get it from my assistant when we're finished here. The Admiral made it clear that he expected regular updates from you on Harrison's progress."

Well, that was handy. She'd been planning to request that kind of carte blanche access eventually anyway, but she certainly hadn't expected it to be handed to her outright.

"I've also taken the liberty of pulling together a list of all the available development labs for you and Commander Harrison. I don't know exactly what kind of space you're looking to set up shop in, but this is a large facility and we are currently running on a virtual skeleton crew…so you're pretty much spoiled for choice. You and Harrison can scope them all out and let me know when you've picked one that suits your needs and I'll have security lock it down to the appropriate clearance level."

Duval couldn't hold back the surprise that she _knew _was written all over her face. "That's…I don't…" she shook her head, blowing out a huff of disbelief. "I'm not used to things being this easy. You've anticipated every single thing I was going to ask you."

And just that quickly, Vazquez was smiling again, the Commander receding and the colleague stepping forward. "As much as I would love to be able to take credit, I can't. Admiral Marcus was very clear about just how important this project is and I have a feeling that what he told me is only the tip of a very large iceberg. I've only just gotten this promotion—you can bet I'm going to do everything in my power to make this a success."

Running that through her internal filters, what Duval actually heard was _you can bet I'm going to do everything in my power to make this a success so that even if it's not, it can't possibly be blamed on me._ Not that that was a problem. On the contrary, it actually improved her opinion of him—she'd always found Vazquez to be horribly sentimental. If what she'd seen of him in this conversation was any indication, age and experience had tempered that tendency, leaving him only somewhat sentimental, which was far more palatable.

Convenient, too. She would take full advantage of that lingering sentimentality where she could.

"I appreciate your help with this," she admitted with a sigh. "Dealing with Harrison is going to be…trying. Knowing that you've got my back on the administrative side of things will be a huge weight off my shoulders."

Now Vazquez was practically preening—odd, as she'd never known him to be particularly self-satisfied. "Like I said, Becca…I really can't take any of the credit. Although I admit that I'm happy to be in a position to help you. Now," he smacked a hand down on his desk, palm flat to the glass, "I think you'd better get on the comm to Marcus. Wouldn't want him hearing about your magical healing powers from anyone else, now would you?"

Duval, who had been preparing to stand, froze, narrowed gaze lifting to his. "You know about that."

Vazquez flashed another of those superstar smiles, all white teeth, tanned skin and dancing, dark eyes. "Lieutenant Duval, you'll find out very quickly that when it comes to this station, I am all-seeing, all-hearing and all-knowing. I am the reigning God of Io and…"

"…and Carlson contacted you as soon as I walked out of her office, didn't she?"

The Commander's smile never dimmed, though it did shift into something slightly more sheepish. "Yeah, she did. But can you really blame her, Becca? Everyone knows you're in the doghouse with Marcus right now."

Duval stood, looking down at him now. "So when I walk out the door, I can expect you to be on the comm to hq before it closes behind me?"

All humor drained from his face, sincerity filling the void left behind. "I'm not everyone, Becca. I've known you for a very long time. I'll always give you the benefit of the doubt."

He meant it, she could tell. He actually meant it. Apparently, he'd considered them far better friends than she ever had.

It was…well…in all honesty, it was shockingly stupid. One of the first and most important lessons she'd learned was never to trust anyone further than you absolutely had to in order to get a job done. Vazquez either hadn't learned that or had been out of the field so long that he'd forgotten, but damned if it wasn't the biggest ace in the hole she could possibly imagine. Knowledge like that could very well prove golden one day, so she tucked it into her back pocket.

"Thank you for that, sir," she said as she stepped away from his desk and toward the door, turning back just as it hissed open to let her out. "I appreciate it more than you will ever know."

She stepped out and left him to take her meaning as he would.

After getting the code from the Commander's assistant as instructed, Duval made her way to one of the comm rooms just down the corridor. Communications on Io were tightly monitored and regulated, though no one she'd ever discussed the issue with had known why. The general assumption was that it had everything to do with the fact that Marcus was habitually paranoid and liked to stick his fingers in everyone else's pie. She'd never actually cared why before, but now, she thought that explanation sounded too right not to be true.

As she punched in the code on the keypad outside the first available room she came to, she tried very hard not to think about the fact that she was going to spend the foreseeable future living under an extremely high-powered microscope.

Once inside, she sealed the door behind her, sat down in front of the comm, took a deep, centering breath, and punched in the code that would contact the Admiral directly, no matter where he was. For a short moment, she entertained the notion that maybe she'd be lucky…maybe he'd be busy, in the middle of a meeting with Starfleet High Command…

"This better be un-fucking-believably good, Duval."

…or he could be sitting in his office at the Kelvin facility, with absolutely nothing to keep him from answering immediately.

Shoring up her nerve—_you have nothing to be sorry about, nothing to regret, you did nothing wrong—_she dipped her head deferentially. "Admiral Marcus," she acknowledged. "I can promise you, sir, that I wouldn't be bothering you if I didn't feel it was absolutely necessary."

"Well then, by all means, _Lieutenant_, spit it out. You've only been there a few days so I highly doubt…" he stopped, the words dying on his tongue as he suddenly leaned in closer to the comm on his end, his face filling the screen in front of her almost comically. "You're all healed up. How the _hell_ are you all healed up?"

"That's exactly what I was contacting you about, sir. Unfortunately, I can't actually answer that question because I don't know."

The Admiral leaned back, his face returning to normal proportions on her viewscreen. "Explain."

Duval shrugged, annoyed all over again by the situation. "That's just it, sir. I can't explain. I can't explain because I have no idea how it was done. All that I _do _know is that it was K…" she paused, catching herself in the nick of time, "…_Harrison_."

"Harrison?"

He was at least listening to her—more than that, she'd caught his attention. When Marcus wasn't interested, he waxed poetic on any number of tangentially related topics rather than focusing on the subject at hand. But this…he was fully focused on her and what she was saying.

"He did…_something_ to me, sir. Something that damn near put me in a coma for two days. But whatever it was, it worked. Everything's perfect now. It's like I was never injured in the first place."

Marcus made a low hum of acknowledgement, his mind clearly whirring with this information. "I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume he outright refused to explain what he did to you."

She nodded. "The most he would say was that he had tested a hypothesis and that I should just be happy that he had fixed me."

"Did he say _why _he did it?"

"Because he needed me healthy to help him with his work and I was useless to him as I was."

The Admiral snorted, and she could hear the honest amusement in it. "Yeah, that's got Harrison written all over it."

"High-handed does seem to be his middle name, sir."

That earned her a sharp, pointed look that cut through any fleeting levity that had existed in their conversation. "After that little stunt _you _pulled, Duval, I'd be careful about accusing other people of being _high-handed_."

Duval met that look head on, not backing down even a little bit. "You wanted him to trust me, sir. I'm a hell of a lot closer to that goal than I would have been if I'd done it your way."

"You disobeyed my explicit directives…"

"No, sir," Duval cut in, temper held very firmly in check. "You _suggested _that I behave a certain way. You also said that ultimately you didn't care _how _I did it, just that it got done."

"And you think pissing him off to the point of _murder _is what I meant by getting it done?"

Her chin came up, pride carrying her even further than sheer nerve alone. "As I said before, Admiral—you want me to win his trust. Admittedly, I'm nowhere near that objective yet. But I'm a hell of a lot closer than anyone else at present—or am I wrong about him saying he wouldn't work with anyone but me?"

Marcus was quiet for a long moment, cobalt eyes studying her intently. "You've always gone your own way, Duval," he said at length, voice far quieter, more introspective than she'd ever heard it before. "It never bothered me before and it's a big part of what makes you elite. But I've gotta admit, it bothers the living shit outta me now."

Duval frowned, confused and not hesitating to show it. "I don't understand, sir—what's changed? I'm still the same Agent that I've always been."

"Maybe," Marcus cocked his head to the side, eyes narrowing, "and maybe not. You're just gonna have to prove that to me, Lieutenant."

"Admiral Marcus, sir…it will be my absolute pleasure."

Another of those considering hums. "Well we'll certainly see, won't we?" He stared at her, hard, for another long moment, then gave a sharp nod. "Now…are we finished or is there anything else?"

"Two small things, actually, sir."

"Fine. Be quick though…I'm due in a meeting shortly."

Duval nodded briskly. "Aye, sir. First, Doctor Carlson is going to be submitting my medical status change to your office for approval on granting it classified status, sir."

Marcus frowned again. "I need to know this why?"

"Because, sir, the Doctor says that she won't submit the change until she knows for a fact that you'll approve it for classified status. She says she won't risk her reputation on my word alone."

The Admiral's frown deepened. "I assume Doctor Carlson has been listening to the tongue-waggers then."

Duval nodded. "I believe so, sir."

"Disappointing," Marcus said, shaking his head. "I expected better of Carlson. But fine, I'll make it clear that I expect the status change on my desk by end of day."

"Thank you, sir. One more thing, sir…also involving Doctor Carlson."

"Christ," Marcus muttered, rubbing his eyes in annoyance. "What else, Duval?"

"The Doctor is of the opinion that Commander Harrison's medical records are somewhat light. She suggested I get him into sickbay for a full work up. I told her it wasn't going to happen; assured her that you would sign off on the regular protocols being overlooked when it came to Harrison. Again, she wanted to hear it from you personally."

"Lieutenant, consider it handled. And consider the Doctor duly warned that I don't have time to referee this kind of bullshit. While I'm at it, consider yourself duly warned as well."

"Understood, sir."

"Next time I see your face on this screen, Duval, I expect to be overwhelmed with progress—both his _and _yours. And I don't think I need to tell you that it better be sooner rather than later."

"Aye, sir."

Without another word, Marcus tapped a button and cut the feed, the viewscreen before her going black. Duval let out a long, low sigh, more than relieved that it was over—and fairly painlessly at that.

She definitely had a long way to go, but it was a start. It would take a hell of a lot more to get her ass out of the fire, but all she had to do was keep going as she was and she had no doubt that she would be back in the Admiral's good graces in no time.

And while she may not have been quite as eager for the old man's approval as she had once been, she'd worked too long and too hard to throw it all away now. Her loyalty, now and always, was to the Section. Marcus would see that in time.

She'd make damn sure of it.


End file.
